Government to regulate job market – Baffour Awuah

Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, has given strong hint that government will soon put in steps to regulate the job market.

He gave the hint when he addressed the Young Professionals Transformational Leadership and Young Professionals Role Models Awards 2018.

He said the step was necessitated by the over-casualisation of work in the private sector.

According to the 2010 population census, unemployment stands at 11.9% among the populace, while among the youth, unemployment stands at 20.1%.

“Because of the relatively high unemployment situation we have in the country, the youth are forced to engage in securing dorms of employment which further expose them to vulnerabilities and exploitation by unscrupulous employers”, he said.

“We have noticed that in the private sector, increasing cases of over-casualisation of work is occurring. The ministry is gradually, but surely building the necessary capacity that will sensitise the labour market and ensure that young people, who are qualified to work, can safely do so within a more complete and regulated environment.

“To achieve this for the working population would require a lot of co-operation and collaboration from the captains of industry and workers themselves”, he concluded.

To address this shortage of jobs, he urged the audience and young people in general, to venture into entrepreneurship, stating that the government had instituted the national innovation and entrepreneurship plan, which will support entrepreneurial initiatives.

To help alleviate the current graduate unemployment situation, he called for a modification of the current grammar school based education system, to the adoption of the United Kingdom’s technical education system, which he said churns out skilled graduates who were ready to take to the job market.



He promised that a new employment model would be rolled out next year, which would be a revolution of the government’s current employment intervention programme, i.e. the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) model to a more entrepreneurship focused model.

He also urged the youth to take the initiative of starting something of their own. This, he said, was the only way they could move Ghana’s teeming youth population away from a dependence on public sector employment.

On his part, Member of Parliament for Wa Central, Rashid Pelpuo, decried the dependence and lack initiative from the youth. He urged them to take inspiration from the disadvantages their societies are mired in order to spot opportunities within their localities.

The Young Professionals Transformational Leadership and Young Professionals Role Models Awards is the ninth of its kind, organized by the Young Professionals and Youth Coalition.

It was attended by young people from the University of Ghana, the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and the Opoku Ampomah University of Professional Studies, formerly the University of Professional Studies Accra (UPSA).