Features
When job seeking by our graduate youth turns bloody at Youth Employment Agency Fair
Employment is a relationship between two parties, usually based on a contract where work is paid for. Employees work for a payment, which may be in the form of an hourly wage for piece of work or an annual salary depending on the type of work an employee does or the sector he or she works. On the other hand, unemployment, refers to individuals who are employable and actively seeking for a job but are unable to find jobs.
UNEMPLOYMENT RATE IN GHANA
In Ghana, the unemployment rate in percentage is calculated by dividing the number of unemployed individuals by the number of all currently employed individuals in the labour force. The current unemployment rate in our country at the moment is expected to reach 4.70 per cent by the end of 2021, according to Trading Economics
Global Models and analyst expectations. In the long-term, the country’s unemployment rate is projected to trend around 4.50 per cent in 2022 and 4.30 per cent in 2023, according to our econometric models.
For the benefit of my patrons, readers and Ghanaians in general, it is important to give a few statistics in percentage about the unemployment rate in the country between 2016 and 2020. In 2016, we recorded 5.45 per cent, 2017, 4.22 per cent, 2018, 4.16 per cent, 2019, 4.12 per cent and 4.53 per cent in 2020 These variations in figures about the country’s unemployment rate show the level of insecurity about the future of our graduates who are churned out yearly from our universities and other professional educational institutions. It is of interest to know that in Ghana today, there is, Unemployed University Graduates Association. The National Labour Commission (NLC) estimates a staggering unemployment figure of 700,000. It appears that no coordinated strategies have been fashioned out to address the unemployment problem in our country.
CHAOTIC SITUATION AT YEA FAIR
The recent maiden Youth Employment Agency (YEA) Fair held at the Accra International Conference Centre on September 10, 2021, which resulted in a stampede as a result of the large attendance of unemployed youth who had thronged the centre to seek for jobs exposed the rate of job insecurity in our country.
The YEA held the event to help connect job seekers to employers. As part of the event, there was supposed to be live recruitment where over 100 companies were reported to have been present to do instant recruitment. However, the situation turned chaotic as the turnout was overwhelming. Video recordings of the event showed how the police had a difficult task in controlling the crowd. It showed also broken glasses soiled with droplets of blood on the floor. A number of these job seekers were injured in the process.
What transpired at the YEA fair in Accra the nation’s capital, really gives cause for worry and concern about the future of the teeming youth who have come out of our educational institutions and looking for non-existing jobs.
HIGH RATE OF UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE COUNTRY
The problem of unemployment in this country has been in existence for so many years and governments have never found a cure to this serious canker. Tried as they could, none of them has been able to address this situation as it continues to worsen. The way the country’s education system is currently structured, has also contributed to the churning out of more graduates into the system with no jobs to absorb them even with their marvellous performance in their education. It will be of interest to know that First Class and Master Degree holders as well as those with Doctorate degrees are finding it very difficult to get jobs. This thorny situation has facilitated the brain drain of qualified graduates to other countries to seek greener pastures at the expense of the country’s development. Medical doctors, engineers, lawyers and other professionals trained with the hard earned foreign exchange, are serving in various capacities in other countries through no fault of theirs because of lack of employment. Indeed, this is a worrying signal we need to address with dispatch.
COUNTRY NOT KEEPING FAITH WITH THE PEOPLE
It is a fact that our economy has not kept faith with the people, hence the huge backlog of unemployment rate in our dear country. The unemployment rate which has become a national security issue is getting more and more desperate and can explode at any time considering what is happening and we need to adopt special measures to address the situation. The problem as it stands now, should give the leaders of this country, a lot of headache and sleepless night. We need to bring all the think tanks together in a major summit to brainstorm on this challenging situation and the way forward.
UNEMPLOYMENT CONTRIBUTING TO CRIMES, CORRUPTION ETC
It is a fact that the rise in crime wave, corruption and other negative practices in our country, can be attributed to desperation among the youth. Some of our idled youth have taken advantage of the situation to engage in all manner of corruption and crime related issues to make a living. Available statistics indicate that most of these heinous crimes in the country are carried out by the youth. We have been paying lip-service in this country for far too long and we need to wake up from our slumber and be proactive in dealing with some of these situations that are pushing the clock of progress backwards.
This country can easily rise above these difficulties if we are able to support our local industries and provide them with the needed resources and inputs to expand production. By so doing, we will be able to absorb the teeming unemployed graduates and provide them with the necessary jobs. Our local textile industries and manufacturing companies are dying gradually and we look on unconcerned. The agriculture sector needs to be revamped and modernised in line with the ‘Planting for Food and Jobs’ agenda of the government to attract and encourage the youth to embrace the concept and work in that lucrative sector.
REVAMPING OUR INDUSTRIES TO ATTRACT UNEMPLOYED GRADUATES
We have abundance of raw materials in this country but how to process them into finished goods has been our bane. The Tema Oil Refinery (TOR), the Ghana National Petroleum Company (GNPC), the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company (BOST), GIHOC manufacturing companies and the host of other companies which are facing problems need to be capitalised and revamped to attract foreign investments so that they can employ most of our unemployed youth who are roaming the streets daily in search of jobs.
It is high time we limited the importation of foreign goods which we can manufacture locally and rather built and strengthened our local industries to produce quality goods for our markets. Spending the chunk of our foreign exchange reserves to procure foreign goods is not in the interest of this country which abounds in human talents. Our human resources are among the best in the whole world and that is why many foreign countries continue to knock on our doors for our graduates to help them restructure their economies.
Our leaders need to put an end to the wasteful spending on unnecessary things that do not help in the growth of the economy and channel our meagre resources into productive ventures so as to create the needed jobs for the teeming unemployed youth.
Contact email/WhatsApp of author:
0277753946/0248933366
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
Join our WhatsApp Channel now!
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
Join our WhatsApp Channel now!
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
