All-hands approach will help solve unemployment challenge

Ghana is currently reeling under a high unemployment rate that has been consistent over the past few years.

According to the Ghana Statistical Service, the unemployment rate in Ghana averaged 8.82 per cent from 2001 until 2013, reaching an all-time high of 12.90 per cent in 2005 and a record low of 5.20 per cent in 2013.

What makes the situation peculiar is the fact that it is not the unlettered who are grappling with the lack of jobs but rather the highly educated.

From three public universities in Accra, Cape Coast and Kumasi, with no private tertiary institutions in yesteryears, it can now boast about 15 public universities across it, as well as dozens of private institutions of higher learning.

Ordinarily, the hordes of skilled persons that the universities and institutions of higher learning produce each year should be a blessing if there were enough opportunities for all of them to put into practice what they have studied.

It would also have meant socio-economic growth, as the university graduates would be able to land middle and high-level jobs and thus become economically sound.

But all that seems a pipe dream due to the absence of job openings for the graduates. Conservative estimates put the current number of unemployed graduates in the country at over 200,000.

While many have commented that the situation has arisen as a result of a global economic downturn, others have argued that bad economic policies by successive governments are responsible for the dearth of jobs and the increasing spate of unemployment.

Indeed, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has warned that unemployment will continue to rise in the coming years, as the global economy enters a new period combining slower growth, widening inequalities and turbulence.

It has also been argued that bad government policies have been responsible for the slow growth of the Ghanaian economy, which averages about 4.5 per cent annually.     

Last weekend, the leader and 2016 flag bearer of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), Dr Henry Lartey, while addressing students of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi, warned that the increasing rate of youth unemployment was a time bomb waiting to explode soon if urgent steps were not taken to reverse the trend.

Earlier in July 2015, the Head of the Economic Division at the Institute of Statistical Social and Economic Research (ISSER), Dr Charles Ackah, told an Accra-based radio station, Citi FM, that Ghana was sitting on a time bomb due to the worsening graduate unemployment situation in the country.

The Ghana Employers Association (GEA) has also indicated that close to 13,000 workers were rendered jobless after they were sacked in the first quarter of 2015 alone.

It is in view of these that the Daily Graphic lauds the government’s attempt to create more jobs in both the formal and the informal sectors as various ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) complete different pipeline projects and implement new interventions this year. 

It has been established beyond doubt that unemployment is a real problem and that it is not perceived. Effectively dealing with the joblessness that has plagued the nation, however, calls for a multi-dimensional and multi-stakeholder approach.

This is something that must not be politicised, as no political party holds the magic wand to make it go away.

The Daily Graphic, therefore, calls for all hands to be on deck to properly equip university students with the requisite tools to make them employable when they leave school and also assist unemployed graduates to set up their own businesses.