The government’s agenda towards job creation, particularly addressing the soaring unemployment numbers among university graduates, will be boosted with the introduction of “Nation Builders Corp,” a new initiative that is expected to see the absorption of 100,000 university graduates, next year.
The graduates to be hired under the programme will be posted to various districts across the country. On average, under this programme, every district should be able to provide jobs for 462 graduates.
The programme, which will be housed under the Office of the President as a special initiative, will address livelihood empowerment and graduate unemployment to solve economic and social problems, according to the Finance Minister, Mr. Ken Ofori Atta.
He said, “The focus of the initiative will be solving public service delivery in health, education, agriculture, sanitation and drive revenue mobilisation and collection.”
The Minister reckoned that the most critical economic problem presently is youth unemployment and in particular graduate unemployment.
Available data from the Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research (ISSER) in March 2017 revealed that only 10 percent of graduates find jobs after their national service and it can take up to 10 years for a large number of graduates to secure employment.
This, Mr. Ofori Atta noted, is due to varied challenges that range from the lack of employable skills, unavailability of funding capital for entrepreneurship, as well as the low capacity of industry to absorb the huge numbers.
“We note that several transition programs run under the various government institutions and agencies including the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, the National Vocational and Technical Institute (NVTI), Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET), Youth Enterprises Support and the Youth Employment Authority, have targeted non-tertiary graduates,” he stated.
It is against this backdrop that government has proposed the new jobs programme to focus on graduate unemployment.
The objectives of the programme would be to provide employment to unemployed graduates, improve skills and employability, improve public service delivery and also improve government revenue mobilisation.
Under the Nation Builders Corps programme, graduates will be trained, equipped with the necessary work tools and deployed around the country to be engaged.
Graduate teachers will be engaged in a “Teach Ghana” programme focused on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and other relevant subjects in primary and secondary schools across the country.
NBC will also train and equip some of the graduates as Sanitation Inspectors in a “Clean Ghana” programme focused on enforcing sanitation laws and inspection to ensure clean communities while also engaging others as trained nurses and other healthcare workers in a “Heal Ghana” programme that will provide healthcare to deprived and rural communities across Ghana.
Trained Agricultural extension and other allied workers will be engaged in a “Feed Ghana” programme that will provide extensive support to farmers along the agriculture value chain.
And finally, other tertiary graduates will be engaged in a “Revenue Ghana” programme that will mobilise the youth to collect taxes that have been difficult to mobilise and enforce collection for the development of Ghana.
