As we continue to discuss the 2022 Budget Statement and Economic Policy of the government, the founder of the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), Dr Kwabena Duffuor, has called on government to prioritise the effort at creating sustainable jobs for the youth in the country.
That, in his opinion, is the key issue in the budget, and should be the focus of stakeholders, including the Majority and Minority, as well as the political parties caught in the controversies over the budget.
We agree with those who say addressing the vexing matter of job creation in a non-partisan manner is an imperative because the current rate of unemployment continues to be a threat to the nation’s security.
Employment deficits since the days of the Provisional National Defence Council have been huge, compelling that regime and subsequent governments to attempt solutions that have still not done enough to arrest the agonising situation of creeping joblessness.
Since then, the spectre of hundreds of thousands of graduates exiting tertiary institutions with little hopes of accessing jobs has been a national worry.
What we have witnessed over the years have been modest attempts by successive governments to engineer the environment and architecture for generating and sustaining job creation efforts. The rate of success has not be anything to be enthused about.
Collective mandate
We understand the current agitation by the youth for jobs as a call on the political leadership of the country and other stakeholders to collectively seek ways to address the problem. There is no time on our side to continue the blame game as to who did what or didn’t do what in terms of seeking to create avenues for employment.
That means we need, for instance, to have a national framework and policy, as well structures and architecture, backed by sustainable funding in arresting the situation.
So, it should no longer be ‘talk-talk’, but affirmative action that addresses the very roots of joblessness.
Like others, we believe that the various initiatives that are being implemented under Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) should receive priority. We should also do same for agro-based initiatives in view of the fact that we are essentially an agricultural economy, particularly at the level of our huge rural economies.
We agree with the former Minister of Finance when he says that “people in authority must have a special interest in creating more jobs since employment is a key method to extricate the youth from poverty.”
Empowerment
In a nation where it is becoming a convention for the politician and the government appointee to act as breadwinner for his constituency, the only opportunity we collectively have is to devise sustainable means to teach our less privileged brothers and sisters ‘how to fish’, rather being perpetually dependent on others.
Truly, a job is much more than an income because it is a key to dignity, self-reliance and empowerment. As we would admit, a job will allow a person to dream, to plan, to challenge oneself, and to build and support a family who in turn will go on that journey.
It is the opinion of the Daily Statesman that we move away from the politics to the realities on the ground and make definitive, unambiguous input into the efforts at job creation.
Alternatives, consensus and commitment are what we therefore need in collectively finding answers to a collective failure that has put our youth on the precipice of helplessness.
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