By Ruth Serwaa Asare
The Member of Parliament for Akim Swedru, Kennedy Nyarko Osei, has appealed to the Mahama led administration to consider providing tax incentives for large companies that create job opportunities for fresh graduates immediately after school. According to the him, introducing such a policy could significantly ease Ghana’s growing youth unemployment challenge.
“I think one of the ways we can deal with the increasing graduate unemployment situation we are grappling with as a country is for the government to implement a policy that will give big corporate tax cuts or tax holidays to companies that are able to employ or absorb some of our young graduates right after school. This approach could also help mitigate the overwhelming annual graduates’ unemployment burden on the Government and the state,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
Hon Nyarko made these remarks in response to comments by the Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Dr. Abdul-Rashid Hassan Pelpuo, who recently disclosed that absorbing all trained but yet to be posted teachers and nurses would consume nearly half of Ghana’s annual revenue.
Speaking in an interview with Citi FM on Wednesday, October 8, Dr. Pelpuo revealed that the country is currently facing a backlog of about 71,000 teachers and 73,000 nurses who completed their training between 2021 and 2024 but are still waiting to be employed.
“If we put the two together and decide not to add the security services or other ministries, it means they will take about 47 per cent of the total revenue we earn every year,” he said.
He cautioned that adding other categories of workers awaiting recruitment could increase the wage bill to about 65 percent of national revenue, posing what he described as a “serious fiscal risk.”
Addressing concerns of newly recruited teachers and nurses who have gone unpaid for several months, Dr. Pelpuo said the problem stemmed from unverified recruitments under the previous administration. “For you to work and be paid, you need financial clearance to show there is money available and that you have been properly considered. In many cases, that did not happen”; he said.
He further assured that the government would pay all legitimate workers who had served but were yet to receive their salaries.
