Ghana will establish a retraining program and a national unemployment insurance scheme to help those who lost their jobs due to COVID-19, said Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta here on Thursday.

The program is to help workers, who have been laid off due to the pandemic, find new jobs by improving their skills or acquiring new skills and provide them with temporary income, said the minister.

“Workers that find themselves in such an unfortunate situation deserve our help. The scheme will provide temporary income support to workers that are laid off and also facilitate their retraining,” he said.

“The retraining program and the national unemployment insurance scheme will also become important pillars of resilience in our labour market going forward,” he added.

According to him, the government will also establish a guarantee scheme of 2 billion Ghana cedis (345 million U.S. dollars) to enable businesses to borrow from banks at more affordable rates and a longer tenure to help them undertake necessary adjustments in order to retain jobs.