The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, has announced that Government’s efforts to reduce unemployment looks promising as statistics keep declining,
According to Mr. Baffour-Awuah the nation’s unemployment situation stands at 11.5 per cent in 2015, but has fallen between 3.6 per cent and 7.1 per cent, the sector.
Mr. Baffour-Awuah said, skills of most of the 20,000 graduates churned out every year by the seven public universities in the country are always not needed to gain jobs in the formal sector.
Addressing the opening session in Sunyani, Mr. Baffour-Awuah tasked Agencies and Departments within the Ministry to coordinate and design realistic employment policies and programmes to create jobs. He said information on labour-statistics and data remains the weakest and huge challenge of the Ministry.
He urged the Agencies and Departments within the Ministry to coordinate effectively to provide the nation with a realistic data on unemployment situation to inform national policy guidelines, formulation and implementation.
On national pensions, he said, pensions remain important and one of the key areas the Ministry was looking at, and advise workers to also plan for their pensions to make life comfortable after retirement from active service.
Mr. Baffour-Awuah said his Ministry is expected to address the nation on Thursday, August 15, adding that the address will be mostly centered on national pensions.
