Unemployment in Ghana is Caused by Bad Governance

Quite recently, Vice President John Mahama has been blaming our graduates for pursuing wrong courses in our institutions and that is why they can not find jobs. The fact is that there is no bad or wrong course taught in Ghana or anywhere around the world so far as economic systems are concerned. The outcome of every course is needed in every community for developmental purposes and it depends of the strategies the government will adapt to. Veep pointed out that our graduates should have studied vocational, science and technology to get something to do but business, social and arts courses are not very needed in our system today that is why our graduates are unemployed because many of them studied these courses. That is not true. Unemployment in Ghana is always cause by bad governance.

When President Kufuor took-over from President Rawlings, unemployment rate among university graduates in Ghana was very high but NPP government adopted different strategy to put all our graduates at work and it came down to benefit Senior High School graduates too.

Please get time to go through the following analyses:

1. President Kufuor used much grey before declaring Ghana as HIPC and out of that 200 million dollars were receiving from donor countries annually, to support our economy. Even today P/NDC goverment is receiving the same amount if not more than that and we do not know what they have been using the money for, but initially President Mills spoke against that decision made by President Kufuor.

2. Kufuor's administration introduced Mass Transportation System and it gave an instant jobs to over 800 graduates around the country.

3. Financial institutions began to extend their operations around the country and more graduates were employed.

4. Kufuor's administration started awarding contracts to many small and big companies in construction fields and more graduates were employed.

5. Graduates from Senior High Schools who were not able to continue their education because of financial constraints and other problems were recruited as teaching assistants while others became ward assistants in our various hospitals.

6. Further more, Community police was introduced to the country and many SHS graduates were recruited to joined it.

7. National health insurance was introduced to give jobs to many graduates from lower and higher institutions in the country.

8. School feeding system created more jobs for many Ghanaians.

Kufuor and NPP experts did all those things purposely to eliminate unemployment from our society so before handing over to P/NDC government there was no unemployment among our graduates from lower to higher institutions. This is the strategy I am talking about.

Kufuor - NPP government adopted jobs creating strategy and the end results were specific, measurable, accurate, real and met the appropriate time, the time Ghana needed a helping hand.

Because Ghana's economy took a very nice shape, it enticed Ghanaians abroad to come back home, so many medical Doctors and other professionals returned. Ghana economy grew at 8.5 per cent which also attracted more investors into the country .

Unfortunately, when Mahama-Mills P/NDC government took-over they have debunked the strategy adapted by the previous government.

1. Immediately when they came to power, they said " Ghana is broke". Businessmen and women became alarmed and they started withdrawing their funds from financial institutions.

2. Amount of money needed by foreign investors to start business in the country was raised up and as a result of that many of them returned to their various countries.

3. Castle boys were snatching cars from their owners no matter how the owners were able to prove their identities.

4 Many big financial institutions have closed their new agencies because their profits have been declined and as a result of that they cannot continue employing new graduates.

5. P/NDC government has bow before International Monetary Fund (IMF) to lay embargo of new recruitments except military, police and other national security services that recruit people annually and this has also contributed to halos and horns effects on employment in the country.

6. Construction works in the country has come to a halt because the government is not awarding contracts like before and as result of that construction companies haves stopped employing people.

7. Teaching assistants for Senior Secodary School graduates have been stopped because, P/NDC government says it has no money to pay them and as a result of that we have over 30,000 classrooms without teachers in our primary and JSS schools around the country. Ghanaweb ( 25th August 2010). Please get time to read the reference, what the Principals of training colleges have said about it.

With above analyses, we now know why unemployment is soaring among our graduates so if Vice President John Mahama is blaming our graduates for not pursuing the right courses, use the analyses above to draw your own conclusions and throw questions to him and see either he will be able to answer any one of them.

To sum up, the causes of unemployment in the country is nothing more than bad governance so all unemployed graduates should try as much as they can to vote against Mahama-Mills government in 2012 elections and I believe Akufo Addo will continue with the strategy adopted by President Kufuor to eliminate unemployment problem from the society again.

Whoever thinks that I have been paid by NPP to write this is a big liar, I don't even have the party's ID card and I don't want to obtain a card from any party in Ghana but I will always look at the right side and support good governance.

May God Bless us.