The governing National Democratic Congress is promising to rebrand the existing National Labour Department into what it calls the National Employment Centres to assist government solve the overwhelming youth unemployment in the country.
“For a young person who comes out of school, if you hear Labour Department you surely will not go there looking for work and so we’ll rebrand it to be Employment Centres and they’ll have branches in every region,” President Mahama said while delivering snapshots of the NDC’s 2016 manifesto Tuesday, September, 13, 2016.
According to him, the new phase of the Labour Department will compile a database of Ghana’s young people and the skills they possess for placement into the industry.
Youth unemployment represents a serious threat to the stability of the country with the jobless rate becoming a worrying trend for Ghana.
Successive governments failed to create jobs for new graduates entering the job market. Nonetheless there is an absence of a viable private sector in Ghana, to absorb the teeming unemployed youth in Ghana.
Mr, Mahama’s main opponent and Flagbearer of the largest opposition New Patriotic Party(NPP), Akufo-Addo has described the high level of unemployment in the country as unacceptable.
But Mr. Mahama claims his re-election will create a meaningful opportunity for the teeming unemployed youth to get jobs, adding that any employer who recruits from the government’s database will be given special incentives.