Frank Paa-Kumi, Founding President of the Pan African Centre for Transformative Society, a policy think tank, on Thursday called on leaders and policymakers to involve young people when formulating youth-centred policies and programmes.

He said this would allow the policymakers to have a firsthand understanding of the youth to formulate initiatives that would meet their needs.

“More often, our leaders formulate youth-centred policies and programmes without involving the key stakeholders who are the youth themselves. Due to this, most of these initiatives when implemented does not meet their needs,” he said.

Mr Paa-Kumi stated at a Press Conference in Accra on Thursday organised by the Pan African Centre for Transformative Society on ‘Critical Issues that Intelligent Ghanaian Voters Must Know.’

He said there should be a broader stakeholder engagement with the youth right from the local and decentralized level, where their concerns could be employed in decision making.

He advised the public not to fall for what he described as ‘freebie promises’ by politicians, saying, promises of free social interventions by political parties must be scrutinized in line with the country’s financial standing.

“We find it strange the massive political promises of free government social interventions and will like to question what is fueling this flag of expectations being drawn by political actors as against the capacity of the Ghanaian economy to support such as a course in the face of COVID-19.

“We will like to use this medium to warn citizens on the need to manage their expectations of post-election 2020 and also legitimately question the source of funding for these freebies,” he said.

He said Ghanaians needed to enquire from politicians on how their policies and programmes would revive the country’s economic growth post-COVID-19.

He said the adverse effects of the pandemic particularly in areas such as tourism, education and employment should be a major feature of political discourses.