A professor of Political Science at the University of Ghana, Professor Joseph Atsu Ayee, has called for a more holistic and comprehensive manner to address unemployment issues to create better opportunities for the youth.
“The nation needs to revisit the 2010 National Youth Policy and review the long and medium-term strategies of the youth and in that document, a youth has been defined as between 15-35 years which means the youth constitute about 36-40 per cent of the nation’s population,” he stated.
According to him, it was quite a huge figure which demanded a consensus from all stakeholders, including the political parties to plan for the way forward as a country, and the government must turn attention to strengthening the private sector since it lacks resources to address all issues of youth unemployment.
That, Prof. Ayee explained, could help the private sector secure jobs for the youth to reduce youth unemployment and that was why it was important for the nation to help in building strong private sector with an enabling environment to enable it take care of the issues.
“It is, however, unfortunate succeeding governments since independence have developed a phobia for the private sector, all because politicians always want to capitalise on the problems and challenges affecting the youth, especially youth unemployment, to solicit votes during elections,” he noted.
Prof. Ayee called for a separate creation of a ministry in charge of youth development to help address youth employment and issues affecting the youth and as such, a ministry should be a parent body to the National Youth Authority and all accompanying youth agencies, to address concerns of the youth.
He bemoaned that the current Ministry of Youth and Sports had undermined youth development because the policy direction had been focused on sports development and had relegated issues of the youth. –myjoyonline.com
