CPP Has Better Record on Jobs

- and promises more

The Convention People’s Party (CPP) continues to campaign on the issue of unemployment and Job creation, which explains why one of its main campaign slogans is “Edwuma Wura” – Creator of Jobs. The Party has identified Jobs as a Key issue for most Ghanaians and thus it is important for Ghanaians to understand the importance of the issue and to compare the record of the main political parties on Employment and Job Creation.
The CPP understood when in government and understands now the relationship between educational supply and the demands of the Ghana labour market. CPP recognised then as now that the Labour force was growing rapidly and its plans took into account annual growth rate of the population. This is what shaped CPP economic policy, recognising at the time that jobs must be created to absorb 70,000 people per year.
It recognized then as now that every year a given number will come forward to the labour market to join the labour force, that this cannot be postponed by any law or policy and therefore neither must the investment required to put them to work deferred, otherwise the community finds “itself with a class of idle but able bodied youth whose dissatisfaction with society may be expressed in the most undesirable ways.”
The CPP knows that young people for whom jobs must be found every year are being born everyday. Approximately 250,000 new job seekers enter our job market every year, including graduates from our universities, but only 4500 people are employed by the formal sector of our economy. A huge number thus join the exodus of graduates and other skilled people to Europe/America/Asia; an even larger number simply join a growing list of unemployed,descending into a life of poverty,and some into criminality and other illegal activity.
The future of these people cannot be left to chance, and that is why the CPP recognizes that employment must be at the heart of any development strategy. The CPP position is supported by the findings of a International Labour Organisation(ILO)/ United Nations Development Programme(UNDP) study in Ghana, which concluded that “ there is a need to strengthen the employment content of national development policies”. It concluded further that “employment must be placed at the heart of Ghana’s human development and poverty reduction efforts”.
The ILO/UNDP report said that “growth alone is not enough”, that Ghana needs “Employment-Intensive” growth. In an international statement released in London over the weekend the CPP asked – “ who is better placed with the best record to deliver jobs to Ghanaians?
The statement noted that the P(NDC) years saw economic reforms in 1983 with a lot of emphasis on Foreign Direct Investors(FDI). Inflows of FDI were largely into mining and these FDI inflows did not lead to significant growth in employment.
Under the P(NDC) formal sector employment dropped drastically from 464,000 to 186,000 between 1985 and 1991, Public Sector employment declined from 30% in 1991 to 9% in 1999, Private Sector employment declined from 11% to 8.7% during the same period. Approximately 60,000 jobs up to the year 2000 were resulted from FDI’s/Free Port Zones etc The NPP’s near 8 year rule has seen a little over 100,000 jobs, according to the NPP, mostly under the NYEP, with many seen as “ not long lasting jobs”. Growth under the NPP has been seen largely as “Jobless Growth”, much of the growth achieved in the mining sector and thus as with the NDC inflows into mining, this does not lead to significant employment because mining has the lowest labour absorption rate of any sector. The CPP created 150,000 jobs in the leading sectors of the economy alone between 1955 and 1961, and put comprehensive plans in place in education and industrialization to absorb an anticipated 500,000 jobs needed to be created between 1963 and 1970. The essence of those plans remains valid today.
We said then that “Young people are maintained and trained until they come of working age, then the means must be found to set up farms, factories, offices in which they can be employed”. The NDC years were known largely for retrenchment, the NPP has had 8 years of jobless growth. Of the one million young unemployed people the NPP registered in 2001, it has been able to find jobs for fewer than 200,000.
CPP – Edwuma Wura
Communications Directorate – www.cppuk.org info@cppuk.org cppyouth@gmail.com

- and promises more

The Convention People’s Party (CPP) continues to campaign on the issue of unemployment and Job creation, which explains why one of its main campaign slogans is “Edwuma Wura” – Creator of Jobs. The Party has identified Jobs as a Key issue for most Ghanaians and thus it is important for Ghanaians to understand the importance of the issue and to compare the record of the main political parties on Employment and Job Creation.
The CPP understood when in government and understands now the relationship between educational supply and the demands of the Ghana labour market. CPP recognised then as now that the Labour force was growing rapidly and its plans took into account annual growth rate of the population. This is what shaped CPP economic policy, recognising at the time that jobs must be created to absorb 70,000 people per year.
It recognized then as now that every year a given number will come forward to the labour market to join the labour force, that this cannot be postponed by any law or policy and therefore neither must the investment required to put them to work deferred, otherwise the community finds “itself with a class of idle but able bodied youth whose dissatisfaction with society may be expressed in the most undesirable ways.”
The CPP knows that young people for whom jobs must be found every year are being born everyday. Approximately 250,000 new job seekers enter our job market every year, including graduates from our universities, but only 4500 people are employed by the formal sector of our economy. A huge number thus join the exodus of graduates and other skilled people to Europe/America/Asia; an even larger number simply join a growing list of unemployed,descending into a life of poverty,and some into criminality and other illegal activity.
The future of these people cannot be left to chance, and that is why the CPP recognizes that employment must be at the heart of any development strategy. The CPP position is supported by the findings of a International Labour Organisation(ILO)/ United Nations Development Programme(UNDP) study in Ghana, which concluded that “ there is a need to strengthen the employment content of national development policies”. It concluded further that “employment must be placed at the heart of Ghana’s human development and poverty reduction efforts”.
The ILO/UNDP report said that “growth alone is not enough”, that Ghana needs “Employment-Intensive” growth. In an international statement released in London over the weekend the CPP asked – “ who is better placed with the best record to deliver jobs to Ghanaians?
The statement noted that the P(NDC) years saw economic reforms in 1983 with a lot of emphasis on Foreign Direct Investors(FDI). Inflows of FDI were largely into mining and these FDI inflows did not lead to significant growth in employment.
Under the P(NDC) formal sector employment dropped drastically from 464,000 to 186,000 between 1985 and 1991, Public Sector employment declined from 30% in 1991 to 9% in 1999, Private Sector employment declined from 11% to 8.7% during the same period. Approximately 60,000 jobs up to the year 2000 were resulted from FDI’s/Free Port Zones etc The NPP’s near 8 year rule has seen a little over 100,000 jobs, according to the NPP, mostly under the NYEP, with many seen as “ not long lasting jobs”. Growth under the NPP has been seen largely as “Jobless Growth”, much of the growth achieved in the mining sector and thus as with the NDC inflows into mining, this does not lead to significant employment because mining has the lowest labour absorption rate of any sector. The CPP created 150,000 jobs in the leading sectors of the economy alone between 1955 and 1961, and put comprehensive plans in place in education and industrialization to absorb an anticipated 500,000 jobs needed to be created between 1963 and 1970. The essence of those plans remains valid today.
We said then that “Young people are maintained and trained until they come of working age, then the means must be found to set up farms, factories, offices in which they can be employed”. The NDC years were known largely for retrenchment, the NPP has had 8 years of jobless growth. Of the one million young unemployed people the NPP registered in 2001, it has been able to find jobs for fewer than 200,000.
CPP – Edwuma Wura
Communications Directorate – www.cppuk.org info@cppuk.org cppyouth@gmail.com