Government to collaborate with training institutions, industry

Accra, April 27, GNA - Government will collaborate with training institutions and industry as part of a broad strategy to offer skills that meet the requirement of the job market, Mr. Stephen Amoanor Kwao, Minister of Employment and Social Welfare, said on Monday. Speaking at a symposium on the theme: "Youth Employment and the Informal Sector in Ghana," to mark the 90th anniversary of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Mr. Kwao said the government's vision was to avoid the mismatch between skills supply and requirement by investing in people, jobs and the economy as a means of improving livelihoods.

He therefore appealed to the ILO to extend its cooperation to cover new thematic areas such as social protection and employment creation, saying these would offer the government new techniques, ideas and opportunities to deal with the problems of poverty, degradation and job insecurity.

He lauded the contribution of the ILO in the country's national development, especially the principles of Decent Work and the Local Economic Development component under which governments were able to create employment, ensure social protection, social dialogue and protection of workers' rights.

The Decent Work programme entails capacity building for policy makers to mainstream decent work issues such as gender equality and child labour. The programme also has a Local Economic Development (LED) component that aims at stimulating local economics growth and policy formulation at both the local and national levels. The LED programme assisted local business entities to form Business Association, which profited from range of services such as financial management, credit facilities and marketing techniques. Mr Kwao asked the Social Partners to rededicate their commitment to the core ideals of the ILO, saying government on its part was committed to strengthening relationship with global institutions such as the ILO, which had made invaluable impact on national development. Mr Kofi Asamoah, Secretary-General, Ghana Trades Union Congress, said the unemployment situation portended real danger to social cohesion and political stability.

He said the country's democracy would not thrive when the economy failed to provide decent and productive employment opportunities to the young people.

Mr Asamoah said successive governments had placed too much emphasis on growing the economy as a sure way to generating employment.

However, he said, economic growth would not automatically lead to job creation when it was anchored on increased aid flows and inflation targeting or management, emphasizing that employment creation should not be seen as passive outcome of economic growth but as a key factor for growth.

Mr Asamoah urged government to demonstrate commitment to job creation by providing resources to state institutions such as the Labour Department, the Ghana Statistical Service and the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare to collect and build up-to-date database on the labour market.

This, he said, would allow for proper and scientific determination of the scale of the employment challenge and make it easy for government and stakeholders to trace and objectively assess the impact of policy initiatives on employment.