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The Deputy Chief Executive Officer [CEO] of the National Youth Authority [NYA], Mr Bright Acheampong says his office is very keen on helping government to achieve its aim of reducing unemployment in the country drastically.

He explained that the NYA's main focus is to impact into the youth good working skills that will help them in future.

“A job that a government can give is a job that a government can take, but a skill that a government gives is a skill that a government cannot take,” he said in an interview with UTV's evening news.

He further explained that, "Unemployment is a product of three factors; the quality of the person, the state of the economy and the policy of government.”

“The person’s qualification, skills and abilities, the economy’s stability and its forces of demand and supply and government’s ability to influence these two other factors – the individual and the economy.

“But government can influence these two other factors through two ways – the public sector or private sector way.”

Public sector

By the end of 2019, government will be employing 54,892 nurses, midwives and doctors who graduated from 2012 to 2016 but have had no job. The days of nurses and health workers picketing at the Health ministry are over.

There is also the export of nurses to Jamaica, Germany, Japan, Australia, Canada.

Since 2017, the government has recruited 59,000 teachers. The Double Track system alone under free SHS has resulted in the addition of 8,872 teachers.

Across all government departments, there are has been ongoing recruitment of public, civil servants in areas such as administration.

Private Sector

Government has stressed several times that its focus for job creation is agriculture and agribusiness.

It is really in the private sector space that opportunities for job creation abounds IF the right foundations are laid. By the right foundation we mean positioning industries or factories not on political consideration but sound economics as we learn from the lessons of the disastrous Komenda Sugar factory.

Under the government, two private sector approaches to job creation has been Planting for Food and Jobs and the Industrialisation plan, 1D1F.

The Planting for Food and Jobs has been so successful; government has now added Rearing for Food and Jobs.

Patience will be needed on the 1D1F plan because setting up a farm is vastly different from setting up a factory. There is no evidence that government is not committed because there is regular update on the progress of work.

The last update during SONA 2019, we now know that 79 factories are at various stages of construction. And 35 are undergoing credit appraisal to ensure they get funding for take-off.

Government is therefore influencing job creation by setting up ECONOMICALLY VIABLE factories and EMPLOYING trained professionals.

But there is another group which government needs to also address – unskilled youths.  A job which the government can give is a job which the government can take. But a skill which the government gives is a skill it can never take. It is yours forever. And here is where tools like the National Youth Authority come in.

We have trained 5,000 in digital marketing jobs with ECOBANK signing an MoU to employ them after the training.

We are getting ready to train 10,000 nationwide with employable skills.

What now needs to happen is that;

Youths must reposition themselves. Just as farmers position their activities to meet the rainy season, youths must reposition.
There are doctors, teachers, auditors, bankers, lawyers who are now into farming. So youths who are unemployed should also reposition themselves to go into agriculture. That is the focus of the government because research shows that is Ghana’s best chance at wealth creation.

Youths must be ready to relocate to the citing of factories. We want to see a reversal of rural-urban migration to urban-rural migration.