Where are the Jobs?

Barely two months ago after the registration of unemployed people, a number of them are beginning to demand the job for which they were registered. Speaking to the High Street Journal (HSJ), a number of them said they wonder if the government is going to do anything about the statistics it collected.

“We have been told that we were just used by an international NGO to conduct a research”, said James Boateng, an unemployed.

Others said the government prides itself in the fact that it has created jobs through the mass cocoa spraying exercise and the afforestation programme. But they argued that these two projects are to the benefit of the rural areas.

Besides, employment under these programmes is temporary. According to Amadu Alhassan, a graduate of Accra Technical Training Centre, what the government promised them was permanent employment. He said they were made to believe that defunct factories were going to be revived and thereby create jobs for them. One year into the administration of the government, Amadu says, not one single factory has been revived to provide employment to anybody.

When we put it to them that the government will first have to compile the statistics and assess the needs of each registered person, they wondered when this would be finished. The government has a lot to contend with, especially on the question of providing jobs for the unemployed.

We at HSJ believe that the registration exercise was very necessary, if for nothing else, but to give us an accurate picture of the unemployment situation in the country. Currently, there are no figures on the employment situation and this situation is not good enough for development planning.

Ghana Statistical Services “recorded employment” figures were terminated in 1991, and these figures show that “recorded employment” increased from 282,000 in 1982 to 464,000 in 1985 but had declined to 186,000 by 1991. But it would be disastrous to use 1991 figures for any form of development planning.

However, it is our hope that when government has actually finished the compilation of the data, it will act to ensure that the hope is restored to the teeming unemployed.

So far, the economic policies being pursued by the government gives cause to Ghanaians to hope for the better in 2002. This is in spite of the gloomy picture painted by the United Nations on the projected growth rate of the world economy. A growing economy is recognised as the best means of ensuring sustainable employment creation. High interest rates, reflecting a tight monetary policy, has in the past impeded investment in many sectors of the economy and has prevented some employment in the private sector.

Today, interest rates are at an all time low. Hopefully, more people will be able to borrow to expand their business and thereby create employment for the hopeful, but impatient unemployed. Perhaps the government spokesperson needs to at reasonable intervals assure these people that they are at the centre of the government’s economic programme.