60k YEA jobs achievable - Minister

The Minister responsible for Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, has expressed optimism that the target handed out to the newly sworn-in Board members of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) to create 60,000 jobs in a month is feasible.

He explained that the agency has started rolling out strategies for recruiting beneficiaries for the programme.

Mr Awuah had earlier underscored the need for the Board members in addressing unemployment challenges which pose a national security threat to Ghana.

In an exclusive interview with Class News’ Kwesi Parker-Wilson, he said recruitment for beneficiaries will be done devoid of party colours.

“Achieving 60,000 jobs is feasible in the sense that we’ve done the preparatory works, we’ve put up the adverts already. We have over 400,000 people that have subscribed to the various adverts that we have rolled out, so it is not like we are now going out there to fish for the people. We know we have a data base of the people that we want to recruit. As I speak, they are interviewing and shortlisting them and I want to believe we’ll be able to meet the deadline,” he stated.

Mr Awuah dispelled reports that the agency is there to serve the interest of only NPP supporters. “When the advert was put out there, I don’t want to believe it was put out on NPP TV. It was put out in national newspapers and national broadcasting institutions so every Ghanaian has access to the information, so I don’t see why anybody will want to label it as an NPP platform,” he added.