The Youth Employment Programme in Perspective

A GNA Feature By Ray Ankomah Accra, Oct. 9, GNA - Kwaku Frank was quite a brilliant child and the pride of his illiterate farming parents residing at Brenyekwa in the Brong Ahafo Region. His dream was to study to become a medical doctor or a lawyer but all hopes of realising this goal fizzled out when his father's entire cocoa farm disappeared in a blaze of bushfire one hot Harmattan afternoon.

This incident halted Frank's plans of entering one of the best senior secondary schools where he had gained an unchallenged admission following his sterling performance in the Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE).

With his father's only means of livelihood suddenly disappearing and two siblings still in primary school, Frank had no alternative but to try his fortune on the streets of Accra where he met his schoolmate, Yaw Manu, who was also struggling to make ends meet. For close on three years, the pair had not been able to make enough money to rent a decent accommodation let alone save enough to farther their educational career. But they consoled themselves with the fact that even some of their better-educated peers from tertiary institutions were still battling to live from hand to mouth. The numerous job applications they had written had yielded no positive results.

A few years later, they saw their number increasing by the day. Their population swelled up to such an extent that some of them had to make the streets and empty spaces in front of shops their homes only to rise at dawn to continue with their hawking activities in the traffic jammed streets of Accra with all the attendant hazards.

The story of these two pals epitomizes the lot of many young Ghanaian youths, who fail to secure gainful employment, skilled training or adequate seed money to enter into serious farming or trading businesses. It is needless to talk about non-skilled Ghanaians, who strive to seek greener pastures in other African countries or make the hazardous trip to Europe through the Sahara Desert or the Atlantic Ocean where hundreds of them have perished. The lucky ones either get jailed or are flown back to Ghana by their host countries for illegal entry and activities or on flimsy diplomatic excuses.

However, highly trained professionals like teachers, medical doctors, laboratory technicians, nurses, scientists and architects, who are not satisfied with their salary or working conditions abandon their country midstream for greener pastures in mostly developed countries. This has given rise to visa and passport frauds as shady and questionable characters dupe many innocent but gullible Ghanaians of thousands of dollars under he pretext of making good travel arrangements for them to go to Europe, the Americas or Japan. This phenomenon has been attributed to unemployment or unattractive service conditions and series of strikes, which the Government has had to contend with.

The 2000 Population and Housing Census (PHC) compiled by the Ghana Statistical Service captures the sector employment situation for the country's population aged 15 years and above. These are the public sector, 6.2 per cent; private sector, 8.0 per cent; private informal, 80.3 per cent; semi public or parastatal 2.9 per cent; non-governmental organisations (NGOs), 0.7 per cent and others as 1.9 per cent.

The above figures indicate a greater shift and emphasis from public sector employment to private informal sector employment. What then accounts for this dismal situation?

Professor Kwadwo Asenso-Okyere, Former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Legon, paints a more vivid picture in a paper ("Historical Overview of the Ghanaian Economy") he presented at the Ghana Academy of Arts and Science/FES Forum in Accra on June 14 to June 16, 2004. Prof. Asenso-Okyere, who traced the economic history of Ghana from the pre-independent era to the present time, stated: "A critical observation of the Ghanaian economy signifies an economy in transition."

The various economic policies and measures such as the Economic Recovery Programme and Vision 2000 had sought to make Ghana a middle-income country by the year 2020. This document had five basic themes - human development; economic growth; rural development; urban development; and an enabling environment - whose objectives were to achieve an accelerated economic growth rate to improve the quality of life of Ghanaians. Prof. Asenso-Okyere also touched on the current era from 2001 to 2004 and the policies such as the Highly Indebted Poor Countries Initiative, which has "substantially improved the Government's cash flow situation" leading to a "decline in debt payments in terms of both principal and interest".

"The stringent fiscal policy accompanied by restrictive monetary policy had brought about some macroeconomic stability by the end of December 2003 with inflation dropping from 30.0 per cent in April 2003 to 23.6 per cent in December 2003 and a subsequent decline in interest rates." He, however, bemoaned the lingering characteristics of the Ghanaian economy that still need to be seriously addressed. These range from the "stagnant structure of the economy, which has not changed much over the years". "Agriculture has been the major contributor to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), accounting for 40-41 per cent followed by services, 31-32 per cent and industry, 27-29 per cent. "The major foreign exchange earners continue to be cocoa, gold, timber and non-traditional export crops, " he stated.

Prof. Asenso-Okyere also listed the problems of low level of economic and basic infrastructure as well as human development, poor natural resource management through deforestation and soil degradation, high inflation rate, unreliable domestic currency, high lending rates, high wage bill and over reliance on external inflows as other factors hindering sustained economic growth. Currently, however, some of these negative trends in the economy are being redressed as Ghana is now reaping huge benefits from the HIPC initiative and the Millennium Challenge Account. Faced with a huge unemployment problem, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government initiated some interim measures to provide skills to thousands of Ghanaian youth through its Training and Employment Placement Programme (STEP). Under the programme, more than 27,000 individuals have been trained in various skills, vocations and trades while more than 3,000 have been assisted with credit to start their own businesses.

As a prelude to the celebration of the National Farmers Day this year on December 1 under the theme: "The Youth Employment Programme: An Avenue for Sustaining Agricultural Development", President John Agyekum Kufuor on Tuesday, October 3, launched the National Youth Employment Programme. The launch took place at no other venue than Kawokudi Park, noted for its banditry and other petty crimes and at the same time for nurturing football greats like Abedi Ayew Pele and Mohammed Polo. President Kufuor said for over four decades, unemployment and poverty had become endemic in the Ghanaian society, "a reflection of the generally stagnant state of the country's economy "with its ever present features of ever-rising levels of inflation, high cost of credit, out-dated plants, under-used factory capacity and broken-down infrastructure.

President Kufuor said "collectively, these conditions had all but crippled the private sector of the economy and minimised substantially its employment generation capacity. But Government has now been emboldened by some positive indicators. These are a continued macro-economic stability, a relatively stable currency and continued growth of the national reserve. Others are Ghana's B+ rating by reputable international credit assessors and debt forgiveness after it reached the HIPC Completion Point in record time as well as the G-8 debt cancellation, both totalling eight billion dollars.

But one major positive indicator of economic progress is Ghana's qualification for the Millennium Challenge Account, which Compact was signed in Washington, D.C., United States in August, this year. This is intended to inject an amount of half a billion dollars into the economy to modernise and transform the country's agriculture. An added boost is the Government's launch of other instruments like the Venture Capital Fund and the Micro-Credit and Small Loans Scheme to make it possible to assist businesses countrywide.

President Kufuor in launching the YEP said it had been designed through the collaboration of several strategic ministries, departments and agencies to empower the youth through human capacity enhancement and creation of job opportunities in all the 138 districts of the country. The YEP, therefore, "exposes opportunities in several important sectors from agricultural and non-agricultural activities through environmental protection, community sanitation, rural health and education, ICT, the trades and vocations with structured apprenticeship and internship".

The Programme again emphasises empowering and equipping the youth with technological know-how, industrial skills, appropriate work ethics and individual initiative to enhance productivity. In the short to medium term, the "YEP should contribute towards the achievement of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals in improving food security, the environment, health and education, with a view to restoring self-confidence and dignity in the youth while it is deemed in the long term to become a critical factor in the sustained accelerated growth of the economy".

The NYEP, will run on 10 modules - agriculture business; community education and teaching assistance; community protection systems; auxiliary nursing; waste management; internship; trade and vocation; ICT; and other modules. Under the YEP, an estimated 155,319 youths from all the 10 regions of Ghana are to be trained under the various modules. The breakdown is as follows: Ashanti, 22,519; Brong Ahafo, 18,008; Central, 12,941; Eastern, 17,909; Greater Accra, 17,240; Northern, 20,099; Upper East, 11,411; Upper West, 10,731; Volta, 16,234; and Western, 8,227. The regional employment figures by module are: agriculture business 74,870; community education and teaching, 14,000; community protection systems, 8,500; auxiliary nursing, 10,850; waste and sanitation, 8,500; internship, 3,200; trades and vocations, 8,500; ICT, 8,500; and other modules, 18,399.

Alhaji Abubakar Saddique Boniface, Minister of Manpower, Youth and Employment, had much earlier indicated that the YEP was aimed at "providing gainful employment for the youth of the country and not just 'job for the boys' as has been speculated in certain circles. Briefing District Chief Executives and District Coordinators of the programme drawn from the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions at a workshop in Tamale last August, Alhaji Boniface said the YEP was building on the experiences of past employment programmes to enrich it and give it a wider scope of creating employment for the youth but not on partisan basis.

The Minister also gave an indication of the sources of funding for the YEP. These include 15 per cent of the District Assemblies' Common Fund, 10 per cent of the Ghana Education Trust (GETFund), 10 per cent of the National Health Insurance Scheme, and 10 per cent of the Road Fund. With the school feeding programme and consequent increase in enrolment, it is envisaged that the education sector, for example, would require 13,900 pupil teachers to fill vacancies at the basic school level. The YEP is thus poised to provide unlimited avenues for the youth, particularly in the agriculture sector where the workforce is ageing fast and which has the greatest potential of generating varied forms of employment.

The focus of the YEP is to improve basic agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation, rural road network, storage and warehousing and to ensure better organised farmer based organisations as well as provide easier access to inputs and finance. The YEP will also focus on encouraging diversification of the production base, promote value addition, improve access to markets and make information, especially on the weather, readily available to farmers and other agricultural stakeholders. These measures will certainly set the tone for this year's National Farmers' Day with the belief that there is a near end to the conspicuous presence on the streets of Accra and other major cities of a large army of unemployed persons both physically strong and challenged youth. President Kufuor, in an allusion to the parable of the talent, has thrown a challenge to the youth by asking them to take advantage of the YEP.

"Many of you have been waiting for an opportunity to be employed. Appreciate whatever help you get and make the best use of it. "You must be optimistic to turn any opportunity into a big gain....We must turn every adversity into advantage; we must not resign in the face of challenges."This is not propaganda or wishful thinking. I am very optimistic the YEP will succeed to make Ghana a more prosperous nation," President Kufuor said. This is a message for all and sundry, irrespective of ones political, ethnic and religious colour and affiliation.