69th New Year School focuses on job creation

The University of Ghana’s School of Continuing and Distance Education on Friday launched its 69th Annual New Year School and Conference (ANYSC) in Accra.

The major annual event of the university provides a common platform for academicians and people of diverse backgrounds to deliberate on issues of national interest.

This year’s programme, to be held from Monday, January 15, 2018 to Friday, January 19, 2018, will be on the theme: “Job creation for accelerated national development: The role of the private sector.”

It is expected that this year’s conference will focus on how to put the private sector on the front burner of solving unemployment in the country.

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National security threat

The acting Provost and Dean of the College of Education, Professor Michael Tagoe, said unemployment among the youth had been identified as a growing national security threat that needed immediate attention.

“It is obvious that the public sector cannot absorb the growing number of the youth from the universities and other educational institutions,” he said, adding that the country must rely on the private sector to create jobs.

Although governments had made some efforts to create jobs for the teeming youth through various initiatives and programmes, he said. “The private sector has been identified as the vehicle for job creation.”

The conference, therefore, sought to set the agenda for the discussion of what was needed to create the enabling environment for the private sector to truly become the engine of growth and create jobs.

Government efforts

Launching the ANYSC, the Deputy Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Mr Bright Wireko-Brobbey, said job creation had remained the focus of successive governments over the past years for accelerated development.

Nonetheless, he said, little had been done and the situation seemed to be worsening, stating: “The Labour Force Survey of the Ghana Statistical Service recorded an unemployment rate of 11.9 per cent in 2015.”

The rate, he said, was the highest among the youth (15-24 years) at 25.9 per cent, adding that: “It is a matter of a national security threat.”

A collective responsibility

The Provost of the College of Humanities, Prof. Samuel Agyei-Mensah, who chaired the programme, said the private sector had been empowered to spearhead the job creation agenda.

Nonetheless, job creation was a collective responsibility of the government, the private sector and institutions of higher learning.

Touching on the ANYSC, he said it had for the past 68 years contributed to the enrichment of the educational, economic, political and social and cultural well-being of Ghanaians, and also helped to shape national policies.