National Youth Council of Trade Union Congress (TUC), has called on government to ensure creation of decent jobs for youth in the country to replace the temporal unsustainable jobs.
According to the youth wing of the workers’ union, though governments over the years have touted themselves of creating numerous jobs for the youth, most of the jobs are either menial jobs or contract-based with fixed terms that deprive the youth of getting full benefits due them. It is, therefore, calling on government to be mindful of creating full time jobs for the youth that are sustainable and take into account skillset development and promotion.
Chairman, National Youth Council, TUC-Ghana, Dennis Yaw Atuwo, speaking to the B&FT, said: “We have realized that key among issues of the youth is unemployment. So people complete tertiary institutions and there are no jobs to do, and even when the jobs do come, we find that they are not decent jobs.
After many years of struggle, the jobs that become available are either contract or outsourced jobs and these are the precarious nature of jobs we are talking about. So, we are calling on the government to create and secure decent jobs for the young ones.”
He emphasized that outsourced and contract-based jobs do not give full benefits compared to a staff of an organisation, and the youth are saddled when they find themselves working hard for organisations and they do not get the full benefits like others are doing.
He made these remarks during a donation exercise by the youth wing of TUC to the Senior Correctional Centre, Prisons Training School Accra, on the occasion of International Youth Day (IYD) commemoration.
The items donated to the centre included one chest freezer, 20 pieces of student mattress, toiletries, washing soaps, bags of rice, boxes of tin tomatoes, gallons of cooking oil, bottles of mineral water, among others.
Greater Accra Regional Public Relations Officer, Prisons Service, Assistant Superintendent of Prisons (ASP), Loretta Valentina Amoah, indicated that the Senior Correctional Centre has a number of reformative and rehabilitation programmes for the inmates but the facility is in need of resources.
She further stated that management is committed to ensuring that everyone of the over 200 inmates are equipped with a vocational skill or educated before they leave the facility in order not to become a liability to society.
She added that funding and logistics continue to hinder their operations, hence, the need for corporate and philanthropic support.
“Our desire is to get all of them equipped before they leave this facility just so they don’t become a liability to society. We plead with the public to come to our aid because these children have great prospect and some are extremely talented and wish to do something meaningful with their lives,” she said.
With some of them in schools at different levels, management is calling for scholarship and sponsorship for some of the children to further their education.
The Senior Correctional Centre is a juvenile correction institute under the Ghana Prisons Service (GPS), for people who are under 18 years old and have been convicted of criminal or civil offenses.
