Our attention has been drawn to the fact that the government is peddling falsehood and allegations to the effect that the Unemployed Graduates Association of Ghana (UGAG) has registered its support for the 2012 Budget. The association would like to place it on record that we have not declared, neither have we registered our support for the 2012 Budget of the government.
The statement below confirms the position of the Unemployed Graduates Association of Ghana (UGAG) on the 2012 Budget.

Yesterday, the Minister of Finance & Economic Planning Dr. Kwabena Duffuor presented the 2012 Budget of Government. Members of Unemployed Graduates Association of Ghana (UGAG) by this press statement would like to make few comments.

After our call to hit the streets soon to demonstrate against the high rate of unemployment in the country, series of entrepreneurship fairs and interventions have been designed by the government as pretence for job creation among graduates. To date, no pragmatic measures have been created to address the problem of graduate unemployment and yet the issue of graduate unemployment has become a topic worth mentioning by various political parties.

The theme for last year’s budget had the heading “Stimulating Growth for Development and Job Creation”. The question still remains, how many jobs were created last year? As a matter of fact unemployed graduates are keenly waiting for these jobs that are said to have been created for the benefit of its members and the youth of Ghana at large.

Just yesterday, the 2012 budget was read with the theme “Infrastructural Development for Accelerated Growth and Job Creation. Again job creation has been mentioned and the question yet again is how many jobs would be created in 2012? In our candid view, the leadership of the country must show strong commitment towards creating jobs and opportunities for unemployed graduates. It is worth mentioning that rampant unemployment of University/Polytechnic graduates is not only a disincentive to tertiary education but could also be a recipe for social unrest if not immediately checked. Unemployment leads to frustrations which could find manifestation in different unfavourable forms. There is a saying that the devil finds work for the idle hands. This country enjoys some level of peace and stability which needs to be guarded very jealously.

The 2012 budget in our view did not outline comprehensive and practicable employment solutions to create jobs for the several unemployed graduates estimated to be in the region of half a million searching for non-existing jobs. The high unemployment rate is a major economic problem for the nation as a whole, reaching far beyond the suffering of the jobless. In actual fact, having large numbers of unemployed people is a huge waste of human resources. Ghana's workforce is one of her greatest assets, and leaving it unused is like keeping large sums of money sitting on a tarmac instead of earning interest in a bank.
We therefore expect government to outline pragmatic initiatives to address the growing alarming rate of graduate unemployment.

Signed:
JUSTICE KOJO ANTWI
Ag. President of UGAG
0266-666939