Youth employment is a challenge to the Government – Minister

Accra, Aug. 3, GNA – Mr Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo, Minister of Local Government and Rural Development on Wednesday pledged Government’s determination to find pragmatic means of ensuring that the youth were gainfully employed to reduce poverty.

He said job creation, therefore, remained a priority of Government’s agenda at leadership meetings that required the combined use of local participation in planning with the utilisation of locally available skills to promote economic development.

Mr Ofosu-Ampofo made the pledge at the launch of the 14th International Labour Organisation (ILO) Regional Seminar for Labour Based Practitioners on the theme: “Public Works for decent jobs and poverty reduction: Policies and Practices” in Accra.

The ILO organises these regional seminars bi-annually with host countries for labour-based practitioners, policy makers, researchers and academicians globally to discuss, share ideas and experiences on labour-based technologies, offer employment as well as infrastructure investment as a fundamental cornerstone to reducing poverty.

The last time Ghana hosted the programme was in 1996, and this year from September 5-9, to offer stakeholders opportunity to discuss development challenges facing developing countries in Africa and Latin America.

Mr Ofosu-Ampofo said there was the need to tap local resources to ensure local economic development and stressed that the citizenry must be encouraged to be creative and innovative to harness local resources to their advantage.

He said there was currently a strategic approach to infrastructure planning and development as part of Governments strategies for the effective provision of social and economic, as well as the creation of jobs for the teeming youth.

Mr Ofosu-Ampofo said labour-based technology had over the decades proved to be a potent strategy of employment and rural poverty reduction, saying “Labour-Based Technologies are means by which all contractors especially those working in the districts and communities can use more human labour and less machines to construct the much needed public amenities.”

Mr Joe Gidisu, Minister of Roads and Highways launching the programme, said in 1986 the Department of Feeder Roads in collaboration with the ILO and support from the World Bank and UNDP implemented a labour-based road construction programme for the rehabilitation of roads between 1986 and 2000.

He said the use of labour-based methods in Ghana produced gravelled roads of high quality comparable to those produced using equipment-based methods and generated rural employment in a course-effective manner.

Mr Gidisu said after 15 years of labour-based technology practice, about 5,400 kilometres of poor rural roads had been rehabilitated while an estimated 30 million dollars had been injected into the rural economy as wages.

He announced that Government intended to adopt the public works development concept whereby sector programmes would include components that would be implemented by labour-based methods to guarantee work for the vulnerable in society and for poverty reduction.

Mr Antwi Boasiako-Sekyere, Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Welfare said Government had initiated various strategies, projects and programmes that would help to overcome the problem of youth unemployment in the country.

In addition, Government was collaborating with development partners such as the ILO to implement decent work programmes aimed at providing dignified employment opportunities to those who had no skills or were semi-skilled.

He said available statistics indicated that some 230,000 new entrants joined the labour force every year most of who had no skill at all or were semi-skilled, and did not stand the chance to secure any gainful employment.

Mr Boasiako-Sekyere expressed concern about how such people were exploited at the workplace and forced to embark on degrading activities to the peril of their lives, and advised employers to treat such people humanely.