‘National Service Is Part Of Job Creation’

Posted: Daily Guide |Friday, 09 April 2010

By Charles Takyi-Boadu
THE RULING National Democratic Congress (NDC) seems to be having a hard time defending its claims of having created some 1.6million jobs across the various sectors of the economy.

This became obvious yesterday when government attempted to ridicule the opposing New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) argument that, it is only the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) which can tell whether specific government agencies employed people in a particular year or not.

In a bid to defend the government’s claim, the Minister of Information, John Akologu Tia, created the impression that the National Service Scheme, which was established in 1969, is employment in itself, since according to him “Hundreds of personnel are doing their national service within the civil service, contrary to the claim that there is a permanent freeze in employment to the service and also that there will not be any national service posting there”.

“While it is important that they were just engaging in politics as usual, it is important to point out that government, through the office of the head of Civil Service, employed in 2009”, he emphasized.

By this, the government and its Information Minister wanted Ghanaians and for that matter, journalists, to consider national service as part of the 1.6million jobs it has created.

It is however not clear whether national service is a job in itself.

The minister is however optimistic that after their surveys, the GSS would later this year, confirm what the various professionals have indicated to government in the matter of jobs.

The minister that noted in 2009 alone, despite the that fact the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank had asked government to put a freeze on employment in the civil service, approximately 982 persons were employed.

According to Mr. Tia, those figures strongly confirm government’s view that despite the constraints, they are working hard and creating opportunities throughout the country.

This, according to him, is the reason why their opponents in the NPP decided to go overdrive with all kinds of rebuttals.

In addition to all the other measures that government reckons are creating jobs throughout the country, the Information Minister noted with emphasis that, 1,563, 982 people were engaged in various sectors thought-out the country.

Under the Youth in Agriculture Programme, he indicated that a minimum of 47,000 people have been engaged whilst the Eco-Brigade Programme which is a multi-sectoral initiative for training the youth in fiber glass making, boat building and beach protection has engaged some 10,000 people.

For this reason, government is said to be considering a review of the whole concept of the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) as an employment rather than a skills training programme for the youth.

Apart from that, the Minister claims the oil and gas industry has already engaged some 1,000 people, a figure he anticipated would quadruple in the next two years.

According to the Minister, “This breakdown, does not even take into account persons engaged by the private sector and also many state-owned companies that have been restructured and positioned for growth and have employed many young graduates”.