By
Dennis Peprah, GNA
Abesim (B/R), Aug.
12, GNA – The government’s efforts to reduce unemployment looks promising as
statistics keep declining, Mr Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, the Minister of
Employment and Labour Relations, said on Monday.
The nation’s
unemployment situation stands at 11.5 per cent in 2015, but has fallen between
3.6 per cent and 7.1 per cent, the sector Minister said.
Mr Baffour-Awuah
said, however, skills of most of the 20,000 graduates churned out every year by
the seven public universities in the country were always not needed to gain
jobs in the formal sector.
Addressing the
opening session of a two-day workshop for Senior Management Team of the
Ministry at Abesim, near Sunyani, Mr Baffour-Awuah tasked Agencies and
Departments within the Ministry to coordinate and design realistic employment
policies and programmes to create jobs.
Aimed at synergizing
the core mandate, roles and responsibilities of Directorates, Departments and
Agencies, and by head of departments, policy makers and the legislature, the
workshop supported by the European Union (EU) sought to enhance institutional
performances.
Mr Baffour-Awuah,
who is the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sunyani West, said information on
labour-statistics and data remains the weakest and huge challenge of the Ministry.
He urged the
Agencies and Departments within the Ministry to coordinate effectively to
provide the nation with a realistic data on unemployment situation to inform
national policy guidelines, formulation and implementation.
On national
pensions, the sector Minister said, pensions remain important and one of the
key areas the Ministry was looking at, and advised workers to also plan for
their pensions to make life comfortable for them after retirement from active
service.
Mr Baffour-Awuah
said his Ministry is expected to address the nation on Thursday, August 15,
adding that the address would be mostly centred on national pensions.
GNA
