President Mahama outlines plans to tackle unemployment

President John Dramani Mahama on Tuesday outlined some plans that government has initiated to reduce the unemployment programme in the coming years.

He said “the first and most important step is to increase skills training to make more Ghanaian youth employable and that is why we are empowering the Vocational and Technical Sector to provide such skills, rather than concentrating on government alone to provide jobs.”

President Mahama who was contributing to the question; ‘what three steps he would take up to reduce unemployment‘ in the IEA Presidential debate in Tamale, said unemployment had assumed a global dimension and needed a global approach.

He attributed the economic recession in European Union Countries and other economic disturbances to unemployment and stated that government would turn the National Youth Employment Programme to Skills training programmes for the youth to develop entrepreneurial skills to become employed and employers of others.

He said government had already equipped laboratories of the Takoradi Polytechnic to train the youth in oil and gas exploration and exploitation to create adequate manpower resource to the industry.

President Mahama said government had also introduced the Young Enterprise Programme where the youth would be trained to gain employable skills that would empower them to develop enterprises to employ more others to reduce the unemployment rate.

He said under the four years of Presidents Mills and Mahama administration, more employment skills had been acquired through the introduction of more modules of the National Youth Employment programme and would continue to chart that path to drastically reduce the incidence of unemployment.