Member of Parliament for Bolgatanga Central Isaac Adongo has said, government 1 million jobs assurance to Ghanaians isn’t an honest truth.
Mr. Adongo was a guest speaker at the Youth Programme organized by the Upper East Regional Youth wing of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) to welcome fresh students into the Tertiary Education Institution Network (TEIN) Bolgatanga Technical University Chapter.
Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta announced plans by government to ensure employment for the youth through its ‘One Million Job Initiative’.
Speaking at the Mid-Year Budget Review, he said that despite the “generally strong” performance of the economy, the issue of unemployment and jobs for the youth, who constitute close to 71% of the population, persist.
Thus, the government plans to ease the constraints of the private sector to enable the sector to expand and provide jobs for the youth, Mr Ofori-Atta told Parliament on Thursday, July 29.
“Recognizing that more needs to be done, Government is today announcing a “One Million Jobs Initiative” to aggressively respond to the need of the country. This is to promote growth in SMEs, support new ventures, and stimulate innovation and start-ups,” he said.
Meanwhile, according to the Bolgatanga MP, the country currently is struggling to pay seven Hundred Thousand (700,000) working under the public sector.
“The honest truth is that our public sector today employs about Seven Hundred Thousand (700,000) people who consumed almost 60 percent of the tax that we are now paying, clearly that is not just enough. In addition to that, those that we are borrowing every day, now we take about 91 percent of our tax revenues just to settle that public debt. So, when you add the wage bill of 700,000 people to that of the debt service, we have about 151 percent of that. This means that we must actually borrow in order to pay the debt. So, there is no room to absorb people within the public sector because the 700,000 thousand people we are struggling to pay them. So, when we are struggling to pay 700,000, how then do we pay 1million people? So, where will the fund come from? Clearly, we must find a sustainable solution”. He said
Mr. Adongo further stated that it will be unfair if the government continued to using COVID-19 as the reason for not creating jobs for the youth. Insisting that the ‘Ghana Must Go’ crisis which happened in 1983 causing massive food shortage across the country during the late former President J J Rawlings was to him more worse than COVID-19. But fortunately, the late former President was about to control the situation.
“Several years ago, when our founder Jerry John Rawlings Ghana was encountered with a major economic matter that is worse than COVID-19 in other areas that i have seen. At that time, we have a major crisis that swept the entire country created a lot of food shortages. Our brothers insist that over millions of them who have traveled to Nigeria to find a living but sacked to return back home at a time we can’t feed ourselves, as a small boy I queued always a kilometer to buy sugar for the family and that was how terrible it was at that time. His Excellency Jerry Rawlings though a military leader at a time, was able to restructure our economy to develop a private sector that was much stronger enough to employ youth”.
However, Mr. Adongo believes the government has created one of the highest levels of uncertainties and risk for the private businessman because a private businessman who is even working in one of the safest areas in the banking, is not assured that the next day he will have a job, because by the next day that has close that bank.
Apexnewsgh.com/Ghana/Ngamegbulam Chidozie Stephen
Please contact Apexnewsgh.com on email apexnewsgh@gmail.com for your credible news publications. Contact: 05555568093
