Govt Is Unaware Of Ablakwa�s 1.6m Jobs � E.T Mensah

The Minister for Employment and Social Welfare, Hon Enoch Teye Mensah, says he is not aware the Mills administration created as much as 1.6 million jobs in the first twelve months of the government. The issue of the �1.6 million jobs is history�, the Ningo Prampram MP said in a calm voice, in an attempt to break a storm of probing questions flying in from the Minority in Parliament. The figure was originally given by Deputy Information Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa in a screaming frontpage publication in the Daily Graphic in March 2010. Under intense pressure from a probing Minority side over the figure, which had been variously defended by some government officials, Hon E.T. Mensah asked not to be drawn into what he called the 1.6m jobs �minefield�. �I don�t know about 1.6 million jobs� he said, as more pressure mounted from curious opposition voices like those of Hon Albert Kan Dapaah and Hon Mathew Opoku Prempeh. The Minister was in the House to answer a question on the unemployment rate in the country. He told the House his Ministry has no current statistics on the unemployment situation in Ghana. �We don�t have the statistics,� he said. Mr Okudzeto Ablakwa�s declaration was derisively received by the opposition New Patriotic Party. A statement signed by the party�s General Secretary, Kwadwo Owusu Afriyie said �what the Mills Administration has been doing in the last 15 months is only sacking innocent Ghanaians from jobs created by the previous NPP administration, filling the resulting vacancies with its party activists, their family members, their girlfriends and boyfriends, and then counting these as creating jobs. Is that job creation?�