The Executive Chairman of State Enterprise Commission, Steven Asamoah Boateng has paid a courtesy call on the Director General of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority, Michael Luguje.

The visit was to get the leadership of the State Enterprise Commission abreast with the affairs of the Port Authority. This is deemed necessary because, the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority is one of the key state owned enterprises that is making strides and also facilitating international trade and therefore growing the national economy.

“You are one of the key state owned enterprises that I keep my eye on. For most reasons, it is the port, it is the revenue source, in any country that must grow this is the place and if we don’t pay attention here and we think it’s a normal business then we do not really understand how the economy should grow and not just the port itself but the infrastructure that goes with it,” he said.

After deliberations with management of GPHA, Steven Asamoah Boateng said there have been great improvements in the operations of Ghana’s Port Authority.

He stated that one of government’s desires is to reduce the rate of unemployment in the country, hence, the expectation that, GPHA will contribute to making that a possibility.

“In terms of employment you have the capacity that was one of the key campaign messages that made us win the election, to create jobs and not just ordinary jobs but productive ones and GPHA gives us that avenue,” he expressed.

He disclosed that, there is going to be a change of name of his outfit from State Enterprise Commission to State Interest and Governance Authority. This, according to him is to manage and boost working performance in the sector.

The Director General of GPHA, Michael Luguje in response, admitted that, unemployment is a bane facing the country and that management of GPHA will work with other private sectors if the need be, to set up policies to create more jobs to cut down unemployment.

“Even in the developed world today, job creation is still governments’ priority and in our case we have serious unemployment challenges. So as a port authority that is always what we look at. How much we can employ ourselves, how much we can empower our community members to also at least be able to employ both directly and indirectly,” he said.

He continued that “this is a subject of concern to us but whilst we do that, we are looking at a number of policy issues that have a tendency to affect our ability to employ more people.”