President of policy think tank IMANI, Ghana, Franklin Cudjoe, has suggested government should consider scrapping social intervention programmes such as the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) and the Youth Enterprise Support programmes.
According to him, government should instead focus on resourcing the various technical and vocational institutions to absorb such potential YEA and YES beneficiaries in a bid to equip them with employable skills for the job market.
Franklin Cudjoe’s comment follows the announcement made by the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Haruna Iddrisu that government has blacklisted companies indicted in the GYEEDA corruption scandal.
According to Haruna Iddrisu, government has taken such action as part of efforts in curbing corruption.
The GYEEDA programme, a social intervention programme targeting the youth was marred by some shady deals.
Government later ordered an investigation into the corruption scandal and changed the name to the Youth Employment Agency (YEA).
But Franklin Cudjoe insists that “it’s not enough to blacklist such companies. That is actually, unfortunately, a lazy way out.”
“I think that the best thing to do is to shut down the YEA and YES and rather focus on ensuring that the technical and vocational institutions that we’ve set up will be resourced and be asked to help these people. I’ve told the minister directly that it’s better off shutting these entities down,” he added.
The IMANI president further charged government to create a congenial environment for private business to thrive, in order to employ more people in the country.
“As much as possible they should be interested in ensuring that the right avenues, scenarios and the right environment exist for you and I to be able to create opportunity for people.”
“Because my challenge is that the same state usually doesn’t serve us well when it comes to the policy making angle which should deal with some of the people they consider to be the wretched of the poor and for which they need to salvage by creating these schemes.”
“If you have an educational policy which suggests that you don’t respect middle level technical manpower, you don’t respect technical and vocational institution and you don’t give them the necessary support then clearly speaking if those who are not able to make it to the elite schools fall through the cracks you don’t salvage them by creating other parallel schemes.”
