Ignatius Baffour Awuah, the Employment and Labor Relations Minister, has said that Ghana has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the world.
Ghana’s unemployment rate is expected to reach 13.4% in 2021, up from 6% in 2010.
According to the statistics, the five northern regions and the Volta region were the worst affected.
But the Minister, while contributing to a discussion in Parliament on the alarming challenges of youth unemployment on Thursday said the country is placed ahead of North Africa and Europe.
“Unemployment rate in sub-Saharan Africa is far better than unemployment rate in North Africa and in Europe. The reason is that in those advanced countries, they have systems of reporting and indeed any person that is not employed can access unemployment benefits but for us in sub-Saharan Africa, such things are not there.
“Even if the person is unemployed, any work he or she lays hands on, he upholds himself for such work. So, you have more people working even though such works are not decent. I will want to put on record that Ghana’s unemployment rate is amongst the least even in the entire international community,” he claimed.
According to him, the main difficulty for the nation is the issue of underemployment.
“Somebody may complete university; his role is to work as a public servant in one of the public services but whilst waiting and there is a family business, he avails himself and helps the family without earning anything.”
“Such a person if you go and interview him, he’d tell you he’s working but he’s not working to the fullest of his ability. That is where we have the highest challenge and I concede that if we have any intervention, those are the people that we have to be aiming,” he highlighted.
Meanwhile, Austin Gameh, a Labor Analyst, claims that governments have neglected to activate acts in the Labor Law that require them to collect unemployment numbers as part of initiatives to address the problem in recent years.
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SOURCE: myjoyonline
