My focus is to create job opportunities in Effutu - Afenyo-Markin

Creating more job opportunities for the people of Effutu and getting the needed enabling environment to attract investors to the Effutu area is a key priority for the Member of Parliament for the area, Alex Afenyo-Markin.

“Our country has gone beyond the politics of ‘name calling’, pettiness, vindictiveness, violence and its accompanying acrimony. I am not interested in that type of backward politics. My target is poverty reduction and enhancing the lives of our people. I am focused on creating jobs that would earn money into Effutu pockets and that is how to reduce poverty and promote growth and development in freedom.

“One of my key focus has been jobs, jobs and jobs. From the very first day I stepped foot in Parliament, I have invested very heavily to boost skills supply and demand to create quality local jobs in Effutu and now some of our artisans we trained and equipped with the necessary tools to start work have become exports into other parts of the country. I have invested very heavily to support enterprise development and growth to create jobs here in Effutu and the records are there”, Afenyo-Markin told The New Publisher.

He continued: “It is easy to sit in the comfort of your home and say people without jobs are lazy. But I have observed from experience that most times, the people we call lazy have simply not had the enabling opportunity to bring out the best in them. I remember, for instance when I decided to buy brand new saloon cars for the commercial drivers in Effutu to work with, many people said drivers are lazy so I should not buy them cars.

“But I went ahead and got almost 200 brand new cars for the drivers and today they are happily working with the cars and no one calls them lazy anymore. They are making their own money through hard work, paying tax to the government, and are seen as responsible husbands at home."

“Same experience with the fishermen; there is a particular young man going around saying the fishermen are lazy people who only sell their children into slavery. He is ignorant and wrong in insulting our fishermen this way. I said no, our fisher folks are not lazy. They only need the proper machines and equipment to do their fishing, quickly, we organized brand new outboard motors for them and today, they are happily fishing with the outboard motors. They have proven that they are not lazy” Afenyo-Markin added.

The Member of Parliament further cited the example of unskilled youth who were described as lazy and how he brought about a policy to train these youth in construction work and other forms of artisan skills: “today, when you go to the estate site we are building for Effutuman, over 400 Effutu youth are there working because we have provided the training, the push and the environment.

“We have given capital to hundreds of Effutu people who want to do mobile money business, we have given capital to hundreds of Effutu people who want to do professional music spinning. We call them spinners. We have distributed high spec laptops to teachers across the constituency… we have given even head pans to our sisters and mothers to support their fish carrying businesses at the beach”, Afenyo-Markin noted.

The Member of Parliament said his quest to create more jobs would be taken to a new level as he is targeting a number of manufacturing companies to set up their factories in Effutu from next year.