Job creation still number one priority of Government of Ghana

Job creation still remains the number one priority of the Government of Ghana (GoG) in the pursuit of her “Better Ghana” agenda.
To help realize her dream, the GoG through the National Youth Employment Program (NYEP) and the National Youth Council (NYC) has partnered with the Youth Enterprise and Skills Development (YESDEC) in an ambitious project aimed at engaging scores of unemployment youth in job creation.
The focus of the project is in Agro-processing, Manufacturing, Services and Environmental Sanitation sectors.
Employment in the public sector is already overstretched and the Government of Ghana therefore sees this initiative as an avenue to cut the ever increasing unemployment rate down.
“Recruiting young people and putting them on payroll was going to be unsustainable in the near future” remarked Abuga Pele, Coordinator of the National Youth Employment Program at the program’s launch in Accra on Wednesday.
The NYEP Coordinator sees the public-private initiative as one that would encourage and afford the youth of Ghana an opportunity to create wealth and participate in the development of the nation.
“This is a legacy we can leave as a nation for our young and up-coming youth,” he noted.
Initiators of the project say over forty thousand unemployment youth including beneficiaries of the NYEP who are exiting after their tenure are expected to benefit from the program.
However, a target of one thousand youth, according the NYEP Coordinator, is expected to be engaged by November 2011.
Madam Akua Sena Dansua, out-going Minister of Youth and Sports under whose jurisdiction falls the NYEP said over ninety seven thousand youth are currently engaged in various programs in the areas of Youth in Film production, Grass cutter rearing, Airport Assistants, Community Police among many others.
She expressed the hope that the YESDEC-NYEP module would compliment the Government of Ghana’s effort aimed at creating direct employment for over seven hundred and fifty thousand (750,000) youth through a four-year period, beginning in 2010-2013.
The Coordinator of YESDEC, Mavis Yamoah told The Chronicle in an interview that her outfit’s partnership with the NYEP is targeting the setup of micro businesses for one thousand youth in the ten regions of the country by the end of 2011.
So far, the YESDEC project has till date trained and assisted over two hundred youth in business to successfully set up new businesses.
Key areas that YESDEC has provided training and simple logistics include Transportation of food stuff from farm gates to commercial or market centres, agro-processing and packaging, water tanker delivery services in water deprived communities, machine shop enterprise, ICT support centres, block construction, catering services and garment and beauty care enterprises.
The beneficiaries, according to initiators of the project would have the opportunity to own the equipments and supported to payback through the various banks by installment over a two-year period.