1-District-1-Factory: I’ve fantastic ideas on implementation – Awuah

The Minister-designate for Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, has revealed he has “fantastic” ideas on how the one factory per district policy promised by the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) will be executed to lead to job creation for Ghanaians.

According to him, President Akufo-Addo recognises the impact of unemployment in the country, hence has resolved to create more jobs for Ghanaians through the implementation of the One-District-One-Factory policy proposed during the electioneering period.

Speaking during his vetting by the Appointments Committee of Parliament on Tuesday January 31, he said: “I think one major issue confronting this nation is the issue of unemployment, but perhaps what we have not succeeded in doing is to be able to have a data on the unemployment situation in this country.

“If you ask me how many people are unemployed in Ghana, perhaps I may not be able to tell you the exact figure except to give perhaps a percentage.

“I am told that the last time we had a data on it (unemployment) was in 2014 and as of that time, it was five per cent of the working population, but I must admit even the people we claim to be working, in reality they may not be happy with the work they are doing, perhaps they are only doing it just for survival sake…”

He added: “We may not necessarily create jobs at the ministry but we will coordinate job creation. One thing the president told me before he gave me the appointment was that we will have to mainstream job creation in every programme of government.

“For instance, if government is going for credit to do a particular project, we will have you do what we call job impact assessment of that particular credit. Whoever is sponsoring it should be able to tell government that this particular project that I am bringing will create this number of jobs. If we do that, then in that case almost every project of government will lead to the creation of jobs.

“Let us also not forget that we made specific mentioning of One-District-One-Factory, One-Village-One-Dam. I have fantastic ideas as to how the One-District-One-Factory will work.”