Senior Minister Yaw Osafo Maafo has said “the public sector is full” and government “may even have to lay some off.”

Speaking at the Ghana Economic Forum on Monday, August 7, 2017 on the theme: ‘The Ghanaian-Owned Economy: 60 Years After Independence’, Mr Maafo said it was about time Ghanaian tertiary institutions started producing ‘technical brains’ who can be absorbed by the public sector so that pressure on the public sector will be reduce.

“They [graduates] only find jobs if the private sector grows, if the private sector expands, if the private sector becomes prosperous,” the Senior Minister said, adding: “If we do not get our mindset in this direction, then we are heading for trouble as a country.”

“Most people coming out of our universities,” he said, “are not technical brains.” “Most of them are in the humanities.”

“It is very expensive for the private sector to put up a credible technical university, so, most of the private sectors go into the training of marketing, sociology, economics. Those subjects can be easily taught without expensive laboratories and workshops.

“If our economy was to go on a tangent like the German economy has gone, then the public sector will not be the place to look for a job. If you leave the university, you would be looking for a job in the private sector or by virtue of the training you have, you will be employing yourself.

“This is how we should all see the development of this nation,” the former finance minister suggested.