President Nana Akufo-Addo and his government have destroyed more jobs than they purport to have created, former President John Mahama has said, and wondered where the many jobs that the government touts to have created are.

A few months ago, Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, at a meeting with the youth wing of the governing New Patriotic Party on Wednesday, 12 August 2020 to mark International Youth Day, said the government has collated the job numbers created since 2017 and they total some two million.

Over the last three-and-a-half years, he noted, “we have developed and implemented many initiatives designed to place the youth at the forefront of national development”.

“When you look at the jobs we’ve created, when we decided to do a proper accounting of the jobs we have created – sometimes they are all over the place and you have to sit down and get together the various people, different ministries, SSNIT to get a good sense of what jobs we have created; full-time equivalents, not temporary jobs – what are the full-time equivalent jobs that we have created in the last three-and-a-half years?"

“And I’m happy to tell you that we have created over two million full-time equivalent jobs in the public and private formal sectors since 2017 and this is inclusive of the government’s job creation programmes and initiatives such as Planting for Food and Jobs, NaBCo graduates programme, National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP), and so on”, the Vice-President said.

According to him, the government has “established a national job recruitment agency through the youth employment agency’s job market centres to match graduate youth with job openings”.

Additionally, he said: “We have supported youth-owned enterprises and initiatives like the NEIP, the President’s Business Support Programme, the Green House Energies Initiative, enabled Youth 1D1F Projects Initiative, Students Entrepreneurship Initiatives, the Presidential Empowerment for Women with Disability and Campus Pitch”.

“We have also implemented the Ghana Innovation Hub for young students in businesses”, he said.

In the view of the former President, however, not only has the Akufo-Addo government failed at improving the socio-economic lives of Ghanaians but he has also destroyed a lot of jobs he came to meet.

“He [Akufo-Addo] projected himself and came across like he was going to be the best leader Ghana ever had. Unfortunately, he’s been the most serious disappointment to Ghanaians”, the flagbearer of the biggest opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) said in an interview with Woezor TV.

According to him, “Developments improve the quality of lives of people. In my time”, adding: “When we were building hospitals, roads and things, they said, ‘no’, they don’t eat roads, they don’t eat hospitals; what they want is money in their pocket”.

“So, fine; even if he did not build development projects like hospitals and things, at least, then people expected that they should have jobs, they should have money in their pockets – neither has happened.

“He’s not made any impact on providing the social and economic infrastructure that people need and at the same time, he has killed more jobs that he has created”, Mr Mahama asserted.

He then asked: “Where are the one million jobs [Dr Bawumia claims they have created]? Show me. In which areas? Aside from the artificial jobs in NaBCo and [National] Youth Employment; Youth Employment was there before they came, NaBCo is the only new initiative they’ve brought in job creation and they themselves say they have80,000 people, so, which other jobs have been created?”

Mr Mahama said “companies have collapsed and are collapsing, as a result of the financial closure”.

“More than 10,000 people have lost their jobs because those banks and small savings and loans companies were shut down.

“The construction industry is growing at negative. The construction industry is a huge employer of artisans, masons, excavator operators, bulldozer operators, carpenters and so on and so forth.

“Most of the constructors are sitting at home, their equipment are parked. What job has he created? Show me in which sector he has created jobs”, Mr Mahama demanded.

To him, the Akufo-Addo government is just dabbling in “propaganda”, adding: “That’s all this government is good at”.

“They have this Goebbellian tactic; you know Goebbels, who was Hitler’s PR expert; just keep repeating something over and over again and people will come to believe that it’s true. It’s the same thing they did when we were in government. They just fixed the ‘incompetent’ tag and despite the fact that our government was performing, they just kept repeating, ‘incompetent’, and people came to believe that they [NPP] will make a more competent government but just look at what’s been happening these four years”, Mr Mahama pointed out, saying the government has been “bungling”.

“The President signs an executive approval for something, you go and ask and he says he was misled.

“Something happens and they say the President was unaware.

“I mean, what are you sitting there as the Chief Executive of this nation for? You don’t read the files? You don’t read the reports? This government has destroyed more jobs than it has created. That is the fact. And, so, they keep touting: ‘We’ve created one million jobs’, where are the one million jobs?”