The Government of Ghana cannot employ half of the working population in the country, and, so, much attention should be focused on expanding the private sector to employ more of these workers, a Labour Expert, Yiadom Boakye Amponsah, has said.
According to him, the government at the moment is able to employ only 600,000 workers, a figure way below the working population of the country. For this reason he said, graduates and other potential workers must turn their attention to the private sector which employs more than the public sector.
He was contributing to a discussion centered on comments by Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Maafo that “the public sector is full” and government “may even have to lay some off.”
Speaking at the Ghana Economic Forum on Monday, August 7, 2017 on the theme: ‘The Ghanaian-Owned Economy: 60 Years After Independence’, Mr Maafo said it was about time Ghanaian tertiary institutions started producing ‘technical brains’ who can be absorbed by the public sector so that pressure on the public sector will be reduce.
“They [graduates] only find jobs if the private sector grows, if the private sector expands, if the private sector becomes prosperous,” the Senior Minister said, adding: “If we do not get our mindset in this direction, then we are heading for trouble as a country.”
“Most people coming out of our universities,” he said, “are not technical brains.” “Most of them are in the humanities.”
“It is very expensive for the private sector to put up a credible technical university, so, most of the private sectors go into the training of marketing, sociology, economics. Those subjects can be easily taught without expensive laboratories and workshops.”
Reacting to this in an interview with Chief Jerry Forson, host of Ghana Yensom on Accra 100.5FM on Tuesday August 8, Mr Amponsah said: “The truth of the matter is that government employees are just about 600,000 workers. If you look at the SSNIT contributions, it is predominantly formal sector workers numbering about three million who are contributing. That means government cannot employ half of the working population in the country.
“And so, too much focus on public sector employment is disturbing because the government can’t even employ even half of the working class in Ghana. It is the private sector that can employ more and so we need to focus so much on the private sector rather than the government sector.”
Source: Ghana/AccraFM.com
