The Vice Chancellor of Central University, Professor Bill Buenar Puplampu, has proposed the establishment of a committee of experts, to develop a human capital policy framework for the country.
He said the primary responsibility of the committee should be to discuss what skills and knowledge the country really needed for the next 10 to 25 years and to help curb the increasing unemployment situation.
Speaking at the 6th National Development Forum on Ghana’s human capital development agenda, organised by the National Development Planning Commission yesterday in Accra, Professor Puplampu said, Ghana should be worried about its weak human capital.
He explained that human capital agenda as the set of activities designed to provide the people of an organisation or society with the necessary knowledge, skills, competencies and mind-set for present and future jobs, organisational and societal requirements as well as economic transformation.
He added that the core object of any policy or intervention in this regard was to ensure that present and future competence and skills gaps were minimised.
Professor Puplampu said the kind of human capital produced, especially those produced by the universities lacked the required knowledge and skills in meeting businesses requirement.
He attributed the situation, to lack of research to identify the kind of skills businesses need or may need in the subsequent future and the programmes developed by the universities.
Professor Puplampu said universities were almost doing the same programmes without any analysis to know whether those programmes fitted into the current job market.
He said the primary remit of the proposed committee were to engage communities of production, consumption and creation; government, industry, youth and academia.
“The experts should commission and use research findings on global high-end industry and commerce/corporate movements and innovations, regional realities, comparative and competitive advantages and behavioral imperatives.
It is, however, unclear the extent to which we appreciate the need to adopt a strategic and far sighted approach to the development of human capacity, competencies and productive skills for our country,” he said.
Professor Puplampu said the consistently poor performance of many African countries on various development and economic indices could be attributed to weak attention on human capital development.
He said the competencies of country’s human capital were the means by which their natural resources could be effectively transformed to serve human needs and thereby build societies.
“There is sufficient evidence that economic growth, societal transformation, organisational performance and the general uplift in the standard of living within countries are a direct consequence of appropriately deployed human capacity and the availability of skills and competencies which facilitate performance and productivity,” he said.
BY BERNARD BENGHAN
