Minister for Information Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah has said that comparatively, John Dramani Mahama led government is the worse in Ghana’s history when it comes to job creation.
According to him, during the administration of John Dramani Mahama, the country had to be given to the International Monetary Fund because in the words of John Dramani Mahama “all the flesh of the meant had been eaten leaving behind the bones”.
He said during his tenure apart from essential service providers, there was a ban on employment in the country as part of IMF’s conditions given to the country when Ghana was placed under an IMF programme.
However, Information Minister indicates that the story is different under the Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo administration whose hard work took Ghana from the IMF programme and set the country on a new path to prosperity for especially the youth of the country.
“You don’t talk without providing evidence. For us, we talk and back whatever we do with evidence and the needed data. If you can remember, it was during Mahama’s era that we were told that we had eaten all the flesh and it was left with the bones so we had to take the country to the IMF.
The IMF as a result also told us that the youth of the country cannot be employed so apart from essential services we cannot employ anyone. During Akufo-Addo’s administration he has taken us out of the IMF and today we are employing the youth in the public services,” he said on Accra-based OKAY FM.
Former President John Dramani Mahama brought his thank-you tour to a close on November 10, 2021, in Accra.
At a forum to address challenges facing the people of Ghana, John Dramani Mahama said the unemployment situation in the country has currently become a “national security crisis” that needs to be addressed head-on.
He complained about the government’s approach to the crisis, criticizing the ad-hoc measures taken.
“Here too,” he said “the government’s approach has been one of nonchalance and the bandying about of dubious employment creation figures. This has been coupled with ad-hoc and unsustainable measures that have led to the throwing back onto the street of tens of thousands of NABCO recruits with virtually no hope of finding sustainable employment.
“At the core of our message to the people of Ghana in 2020 was jobs, because the unemployment issue was staggering. And the youth bulge has surely become a major threat to our country. From all the pillars of our policy planks in the People’s Manifesto – Infrastructure for Growth, Fixing the Economy, Tax cuts for jobs, developing a Digitally Functional Economy among others, our focus was on Jobs and Prosperity for all.
“But for the actions of the Electoral Commission and the Supreme Court of Ghana, an NDC administration would have been in place today, and the implementation of our various people-centred policies would have provided you, and all of us, better conditions of living than we see today.
“Unemployment continues to plague our country and it is clear this government has no sustainable plan to address it. The botched NABCO experiment has proven not to be the pathway and the means to an end. We need to come together and face youth unemployment head-on.
“The NDC’s one million (Edwumapa) Jobs Creation Plan, the free TVET and National Apprenticeship Programme as contained in our manifesto are still relevant and available for this government to draw on for implementation. If well implemented, we can create an average of 250,000 jobs every year for the youth of Ghana,” he said.