“I define genuine full employment as a situation where there are at least as many job openings as there are persons seeking employment,…” - William Vickrey

U
nder the Mills/Mahama administration, unemployment has yet again soared to unimaginable heights and has become the hallmark of poverty.
The rate of unemployment and the lack of decent jobs in the country make it evident why Unicef predicts that Ghana is likely to miss its next targets for the Millennium Development Goals (or MDGs) — promoting gender equality and empowerment of women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases.

Better Ghana or Bitter Ghana?
When NPP took power in 2000, Ghana was broken and on its knees: 20% of the country's labour force were without jobs and 52% were underemployed, leaving only 28% in employment, 16% in public service and 14% in the formal and informal private sectors.
By 2008, when NPP handed over power to the Mills/ Mahama administration, Mother Ghana was back on her feet. Eighty-nine per cent of the Ghanaian working population were in some form of employment, with over 60% in the private sector. Unemployment was pegged at only 11% (according to the CIA World Fact Book for March 2011). A 2007 World Bank report indicated that unemployment under the NPP government fell on average by more than 0.5% every quarter.
The economic policy of the Kufuor-led NPP – all inclusive - government, produced an unprecedentedly open-economy that brought a boom all sectors of Ghana's economy. Most importantly, large numbers of people were being employed rapidly in the banking industry, by micro-financing companies, small-scale business, in construction, agriculture, manufacturing and communication, to name just a few.
In addition, government initiatives, such as the National Youth Employment Programme, the National Health Insurance Scheme, the National Identification Project, the School Feeding Programme etc, led to the public sector increasing its employment quota by a further 6%.
Ghana was indeed open for business, and the job market was growing rapidly. This success led to Ghana being forecast as having the potential to meet its MDG targets.
The same cannot be said about the Mills/Mahama-led NDC ‘exclusive’ presidency. Unemployment in Ghana today is pegged at 21% barely two years in NDC administration. Unemployment is predicted to hit 30% by December 2012. In fact, even key members of NDC have admitted openly that Ghana is moving backwards.
Ghanaians are undoubtedly suffering the harshest effects of unemployment. Under the Mills/Mahama NDC regime, suicide is becoming a growing social phenomenon, caused by unrelenting stress due to the lack of jobs. Armed robbery is growing. Prostitution and fraud (known as ‘sakawa’) have become the only forms of employment for most young Ghanaians. The National Youth Employment Programme has almost collapsed.
In fact, the size of the economically active population available for work but that cannot be employed has become a prime national security threat. The seeming lack of attention to youth development by the Mills/Mahama government compounds the matter. For the first time in Ghana history we have witnessed a recognised association called “Unemployment Graduates Association in Ghana”
The situation is so fraught that our young people have become vulnerable to the machinations of NDC politicians and other self-aggrandizing individuals. As such, what we have been experiencing since the handover of power in 2009 is the so-called NDC foot soldiers seizing public toilets, vandalizing government offices, chasing district and metropolitan chief executives out of office because they have been FAILED BY THE MILLS/MAHAMA GOVERNMENT AND THE WILD PROMISES OF JOBS HAVE BECOME A FIASCO.



Double Standards!
To complicate the unemployment woes of Ghanaian youths in particular, is a growing disparity of skills in the youth labour market, partly as a result of the relatively low quality of education under the NDC government and a failure to orient curricula to fulfill the needs of the private sector employers. The NPP government attempted to fix this problem by introducing a seven-year secondary school cycle.
Mills/Mahama in their wisdom decided to revert to the six-year system, just to score cheap political (manifesto) points. Sadly, this happened under the watch of Mr. Tetteh Enyo, who according to the parliamentary ‘hansard’ spoke in favour of the 4-year-SHS, but quickly changed his position in honour of NDC manifesto of 3-year-SSS when appointed Education Minister.

Timeline of Mills/Mahama, Hypocrisy!
January 7 2009 – President Mills takes office and promises: “I shall continue the good policies of NPP and former President Kufuor…”
March 1 2009 – Mills/Mahama fails to pay National Youth Employment workers' salaries for two months and tells them they are to be laid off.
March 6 2009 – President Mills promise the youth jobs and better conditions through the implementation of a National Youth Policy.
March to December 2009 – Mills/Mahama NDC fails to implement youth policy. NDC foot soldiers rampage due to the lack of jobs.
March 6 2010 – President Mills dedicates Independence Day yet again to the youth and promises them jobs through his “Better Ghana Agenda” which will implement a new youth policy.
March 24 2010 – Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, Deputy Minister of Information, claims through the ministry that the NDC government has created 1.6 million jobs. However, they are unable to state which people have been employed or the specific places where these jobs have been created.
May to July 2010 – The National Youth Co-ordinator, Sekou Nkrumah, tells Ghanaians that the NDC government is ineffective and the leadership has lost direction. Youth policy under the Better Ghana Agenda, he says, has become a mirage due to the incompetence of the Mills/Mahama government.
July 15 2010 – Sekou Nkrumah is fired and joins the long list of the unemployed. Why? He told the truth: that the Mills/Mahama-led NDC government lacks vision and leadership and has failed Ghanaians. His only crime is the legitimate complaint that unemployment is soaring and the youth are bearing the brunt.
September 2010 – We see open disaffection in the NDC due to drift, visionless management of new projects and bandying around of threadbare ideas. Party members start to complain openly about Mills/Mahama, its failed leadership and soaring rates of unemployment.

True NDC(s) admit all is not well with Mills/Mahama Administration!
May 4 2011 - Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, J J Rawlings, Josiah Aryeh, Teye Nyaunu MP, Kofi Adams stated: “We voted for a government that promised change, but they instead have brought hardship, unemployment, and have killed the aspirations of the ordinary Ghanaians.”
May 12 2011 – Ras Mubarak, a vociferous NDC youth activist, stated: “I am against [having] the president as leader of our party and country again because if he was an NPP leader, members of the NDC would have been against him too. Productivity is low, industrial production is going down. The only things going up are prices, unemployment, taxes and the size of government.”

Next Steps!
While Ghanaians are suffering and unemployment is at all-time high, we hear the Mills/Mahama government is planning to spend 90 million Ghana cedis on Mills's campaign for re-election as flagbearer of NDC. Just to kick things off, we are told they are dishing out ¢4,000 plus motorbikes to delegates in return for votes. Imagine the number of jobs this money could create for the unemployed.
As a country, we have a choice: either to stay on the broken tracks we have been riding under the NDC or to awake from our slumber and come together to join the NPP to build a society where young people have the opportunity to achieve if they work hard. The NPP and Nana Akufo-Addo strongly believe that this is the promise that informed our forefathers' struggle for independence.

“Any degree of unemployment worries me”. - Gerhard Schroder

The NPP – the Danquah/Busia/Dombo family tradition – is that, no matter how great the challenge or how difficult the circumstance, every Ghanaian of sound mind, body and soul must and should have access to gainful employment, provided that person is willing to work hard for it, and fight for it, and, above all, believe in it.
An NPP government would act in the belief that the ultimate solution to unemployment is to re-invest in the youth (16- to 35-year-olds), who are the biggest casualties of this unemployment saga. The Akufo-Addo-led NPP government know that there could be jobs and vacancies in abundance only if new businesses are created by the youth, for the benefit of the youth. And such jobs will be of great concern to the youth, because they will have a greater stakes in them.
Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP firmly believe that the state alone cannot employ everybody. The philosophy of Nana Akufo-Addo and the NPP, therefore, is to promote, encourage, support and resource private enterprise, and particularly youth entrepreneurship.
The lessons the good people of Ghana must learn from the failed NDC administration is that the only way we as a nation can break this jinx of unemployment is:
1. For Ghanaians to boot NDC out of office in 2012 and bring back NPP because the NDC thrives on politics of deception and ‘words without action’.
2. To work together as one nation and one people, regardless of our ideological differences.
Our pledge as a nation is to be “bold to defend forever the cause of freedom and of rights”. These rights, understandably, include the right to employment.
BE BOLD! SAY: “Never again are we going to build our hopes on promises that fail to deliver”.
Join me in taking a stand and vote NPP and Nana Akufo-Addo come 2012, for a future where we can renew the promise at the very heart of all Ghanaians': A promise that - “Every determined Ghanaian has the chance to be in a gainful employment if they really try.”
JOIN NANA AKUFO-ADDO AND THE NPP 2012 “HOPE CAMPAIGN”. LET US ALL WORK HARD TO DEFEAT NDC. VOTE NPP IN THE 2012 ELECTION, AND LET US HEAL THIS OPEN SORE FINALLY!!

Kukrudu! Kukrudu! BE BOLD.

BY: Andrews Owusu Osei
Member - NPP Communication Team –UK and Ireland Branch
Kojosofo@hotmail.com