The Eastern regional Organizer of the opposition National Democratic Congress, Hackman Kabore, has said job losses under the ruling New Patriotic Party government is more than its “fictitious figure of jobs created.”

The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffuor Awuah on Thursday ,15 August 2019, revealed that the government had created a total of 611,397 new jobs in the formal sector while additional 1,539,000 new jobs created in the agricultural sector specifically under government’s flagship Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ) programme.

Breakdown of the jobs created in the formal sector are Government ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs) absorbed 343,458 out of the total figure with 267,939 getting placements in other formal private sector areas. He admitted the unemployment rate has currently hovers around 7.1%.

However, speaking to the media in Koforidua, Kabore asserted that “job losses spanning from the banking sector clean up exercise which has led to collapse of nine(9) indigenous banks and hundreds of microfinance companies as well as the mining sector job losses and even the media sector is over one million which have affected over three million direct dependants.”

He added that “so even on the face of this factitious figure of jobs created by government it is clear that many people have lost their jobs under this government hence the excruciating hardship everywhere”.