My next gov’t will address youth unemployment - Mahama

President John Dramani Mahama has indicated that the next National Democratic Congress (NDC) will implement an Economic Transformation and Livelihood Empowerment Programme (ETLEP), with the view to creating more employment for the youth to identify economic potential in the agricultural space in Ghana.

According to him, his government will focus on a job creation strategy that targets manufacturing, agriculture and agribusiness, Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES), implementation of the National Infrastructure Plan, small and medium scale business enterprises, special development zones and tourism.

To do that, he said they will support a growing private sector to complement the job creation efforts of government, increase employment in the agriculture sector through agriculture modernization, as well as improve and expand the agro-industry with a focus on irrigation infrastructure.

President Mahama maintained that they will continue to provide training in agricultural production, entrepreneurial skills development (business excellence), supervision and monitoring for youth in agriculture.

He believes the strategy is feasible because his government has already stabilized the economy by reducing the budget deficit to single digit, stabilizing the exchange rate, and also Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth projected to be above 8 percent in 2017.

“We intend to create jobs through promoting entrepreneurship and direct job programmes introduce programmes to address labour supply and to increase productivity and employability of the youth”, the President through the party’s 2016 manifesto outlined.

He said government will establish a human resource database for Ghana, expand the scope of the local content act to cover other sectors of the economy, such as construction and mining.

Under the policies the NDC will implement, President Mahama was confident that the NDC can establish employment service providers in all MMDAs and set job outcome targets for these service providers as well as establish a Labour Market Information System.

“We will rebrand the Labour Department to become a National Employment Center to hold a database of Ghanaians and their qualifications and skills sets. Employers will be offered incentives to recruit from this database”, he pointed out.

He estimated that the next NDC government will expand the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) job creation opportunities from 100,000 to 400,000 and promote occupational health and safety standards in the work environment.

“Continue to encourage able and willing youth to Distribute vehicles to be used for taxis and tricycles to be used as intermediate means of transport and Disburse funds to youth in other micro and small scale enterprises”, the President underscored.