Ignatius Baffour-Awuah

Members of the Association of Graduates in Skills Development-Ghana formerly known as the Unemployed Graduates Association of Ghana, are unhappy with the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, over his “misleading” data on unemployed Ghanaians.

This follows the Minister’s recent comments that government’s efforts to reduce unemployment looks promising as statistics keep declining.

The nation’s unemployment situation stands at 11.5 per cent in 2015, but has fallen between 3.6 per cent and 7.1 per cent, Mr. Baffour-Awuah, said on Monday.

He said, however, skills of majority of the graduates churned out every year by the seven public universities in the country were not needed to gain jobs in the formal sector.

But the unemployed graduates strongly disagreed with the Minister.

President of the Association, Desmond Bress-Biney, in a statement, said “it is entirely false as there are no available data to this effect.”

The statement indicated that “reference can be made from Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) or the Economics Department of the University of Ghana. The last official document released by GSS put unemployment rate at 11.9%.”

It said “it is unfortunate that Hon. Awuah after failing to identify the over 1.5 million jobs the New Patriotic Party (NPP) created at the launch of NABco in 2017 at Kumasi comes with another false claims.”

“The association humbly call on the president, H.E. Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to call him to order and task him to rebrand our Labour Department under his Ministry with the right tools to provide us with accurate or close to accurate data