The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has promised to create 200,000 public sector jobs if it wins power in the upcoming general elections on December 7, 2020.

NDC National Communications Officer, Sammy Gyamfi, said at a press conference held at the party’s headquarters in Accra that a Human Resource Gap (HR Gap) Analysis of the public sector conducted by a crack team of experts in the party has revealed that, contrary to claims that the sector was choked that is not the case.

He said the results of the analysis show that Ghana’s public sector was not operating at an optimum level across all facets of the public service when juxtaposed with international or globally accepted standards.

“The net effect of the Public Sector HR Gap Analysis on job creation is that the next NDC government will create a minimum of 200,000 additional, decent and well-paid public sector jobs.

“This is a scientific job creation model; backed by needs assessment and global best practice, and we are totally committed to it. The rationale is to ensure that we conform to internationally acceptable standards while guaranteeing productivity within the public sector,” Sammy Gyamfi said on Wednesday, October 14, 2020.

He also said aside from the NDC’s million jobs agenda, if its flagbearer, Mahama Dramani Mahama is elected as President, his government will aggressively pursue skills development programmes to equip the country’s human resource capital with employable skills as a means of addressing the high unemployment malaise confronting the country.

“Our Skills development program will be anchored on free Technical and Vocational Education Training,” he said.

He explained that the next NDC government will introduce Free Technical and Vocational Education at both the Secondary and Tertiary levels.

“It is important to state that currently, there is no Free TVET at the tertiary level (Polytechnic/Technical Universities). Even at the Senior High School (SHS) level, majority of TVET schools like NVTI are not benefiting from the free SHS policy,” he said.

The National Apprenticeship programme, he said, will also be used to create many sustainable jobs for Ghanaians.

“Under this policy, any Ghanaian desirous to learn a craft will be enrolled into a training program as an apprentice under a registered master-craftsperson for free by the government,” Sammy Gyamfi said.

According to him, these apprentices will be paid stipends to support their feeding, transportation among others.