Youth unemployment a national security threat – Mubarak

National Coordinator of the National Youth Authority, Ras Mubarak, has admitted to the challenges facing the country’s youth, stressing the Authority is doing its best to solve them.

As a result, he says an implementation plan for the National Youth Policy has been validated to guide expenditure on the youth by Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).

Mr Mubarak was speaking on TV3’s Midday Live on Wednesday, February 12, 2014.

He was particularly concerned about the high rate of youth unemployment in the country.

“It is a huge challenge to a lot of people and so to all public institutions,” he said, noting that: “Unemployment comes with national security threat”.

He assured that several measures have been taken to stem the rate of unemployment.

“We have given ourselves a target of one year to identify the number of youth unemployed in Ghana,” he indicated.

According to him, the Authority is liaising with the Ghana Statistical Service to know the number of men and women, as well as disabled, who are unemployed in order to rightly draw plans to help them.

“We can help the youth to become job givers and not job seekers,” he told TV3’s Joyce Midley, explaining that several entrepreneurship programmes have been lined up to help the youth unemployed.

“We have gone further to engage the development partners and embassies.”

The Member of Parliament-aspirant for Ablekuma North Constituency said what the Authority is pressing hard on is the National Youth Bill, which is currently in Cabinet.

He said when assented to, the Bill will complement the African Youth Charter which Ghana ratified to become the 34th country on the continent to do so.