We’ve created 2 million jobs - Bawumia

The Akufo-Addo government has created two million jobs since coming into office, Vice-President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has said.

At a meeting with the youth wing of the governing New Patriotic Party on Wednesday, 12 August 2020 to mark International Youth Day, Dr Bawumia said the government has collated the job numbers created since 2017 and they total some two million.

Over the last three-and-a-half years, he noted, “we have developed and implemented many initiatives designed to place the youth at the forefront of national development”.

“When you look at the jobs we’ve created, when we decided to do a proper accounting of the jobs we have created – sometimes they are all over the place and you have to sit down and get together the various people, different ministries, SSNIT to get a good sense of what jobs we have created; full-time equivalents, not temporary jobs – what are the full-time equivalent jobs that we have created in the last three-and-a-half years?

“And I’m happy to tell you that we have created over two million full-time equivalent jobs in the public and private formal sectors since 2017 and this is inclusive of the government’s job creation programmes and initiatives such as Planting for Food and Jobs, NaBCO graduates programme, National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP), and so on”, the Vice-President said.

According to him, the government has “established a national job recruitment agency through the youth employment agency’s job market centres to match graduate youth with job openings”.

Additionally, he said: “We have supported youth-owned enterprises and initiatives like the NEIP, the President’s Business Support Programme, the Green House Energies Initiative, enabled Youth 1D1F Projects Initiative, Students Entrepreneurship Initiatives, the Presidential Empowerment for Women with Disability and Campus Pitch”.

“We have also implemented the Ghana Innovation Hub for young students in businesses”, he said.