Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia today launched the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) Job Centre and Artisan Directory to create job opportunities for entrepreneurs, trained artisans and the teeming numbers of unemployed youth.
The launch, which forms part of President Akufo-Addo's flagship programmes, is an initiative to bridge the gap between the employed and unemployed.
The YEA rolled out four major initiatives which are the YEA Job Centre, Artisan Directory, Regional Flagship Project and the Work Abroad Programme; designed to match job seekers to a myriad of opportunities locally and internationally.
The Job Centre portal, according to YEA, will provide two modules thus an online centre and a walk-in platform where people can walk in anytime to their offices for assistance on employment related issues.
It also seeks to align a wide range of publicly and privately listed employment, training and educational opportunities as well as provide high quality customer service to job seekers and potential employers.
The Artisan Directory, on the other hand, seeks to provide trained artisans with a ready market to showcase their craft and services, and also connect them to the market place of skills.
The Regional Flagship Project seeks to create sustainable livelihood for the youth and directly engage at least 10,000 youth within the first year of implementation whereas the Work Abroad Programme is focused on finding decent employment opportunities for young Ghanaians outside the shores of the country.
Dr. Bawumia advised the youth to take advantage of the government's initiatives saying “government has initiated this platform to skill and connects the youth to existing, emerging decent jobs. It will also serve as a convener to the state which seeks to increase employment opportunities and growth. In the last two years alone we have recruited and employed 350,000 people in all aspects of the economy".
About the YEA Job Centre
The Job Centre is a platform (online and physical) that will connect job seekers to employers of all fields within the public and private sectors across the country. It will capture all formal and informal employers as well as graduate and non-graduate job seekers. The platform comes with three main components:
I. Online portal: this is a virtual platform that allows job seekers to search and apply for jobs advertised by employers while employers, on the other hand, enjoy the convenience of advertising vacancies online and placing a request to the Job Centre for the supply of goal-oriented personnel.
II. Walk-in Centres: these are localized offices across all districts in the country designated to supporting and guiding job seekers and employers alike. It is a face-to-face centre where advisory, counselling and mentoring services will be provided.
III. Training Hub: will be temporal centres set up to provide quality training, skill upgrade and matching to give job seekers a heads start in the job market.
IV. Second is the Artisan Directory. This is a skill development program that will build the capacity of artisans and craftsmen and train new ones in various crafts like carpentry, tiling, hairdressing, fashion design, plumbing etc. They will be put together in a common database where clients can easily access their services online. They will also be monitored and supported until they become full-blown entrepreneurs on their own.
V. Another is the Regional and District Flagship Program. This project is premised on the peculiar Agro-business needs of the various districts across the country. District offices are being supported with funds to venture into viable Agricultural projects that will thrive within their communities while providing employment for its people. Some projects in the offing include mechanized maize farms in the Bono Region, Aqua-culture project in the Volta Region among others.
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