Economist, Dr Benjamin Amoah, has called for a deliberate approach to link the Free Senior High School (FSHS) policy to businesses to tackle Ghana’s unemployment challenge.
The senior lecturer with the department of finance at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS), lauded the investment of the government into the initiative over the past seven years.
He said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency, noting that, it was worrying that there had not been a strategic collaboration between the implementation of the initiative with the private sector to absorb students after school.
Figures provided by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) show that the country’s almost 12 million Ghanaians were employed, but some 2.6 million others were unemployed, representing an unemployment rate of 14.7 per cent.
Also, some 530,000 individuals transitioned from employment into unemployment status between the fourth quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, the Annual Household Income and Expenditure Survey (AHIES) Labour Force Bulletin, disclosed.
Dr Amoah said, “There is nothing wrong with building human capital, but what we’ve had not is any proper plan in channelling the knowledge that we have developed from the free SHS concept into job creation and onto the job market.”
He stated that while some of the students had progressed to various tertiary institutions, with some graduating,” the question is, how many of these beneficiaries have been employed? And how many of them are paying taxes?”
The economist, therefore, asked the government to deliberately involve private sector businesses in the implementation of the Free SHS programme, as those employed would eventually contribute to economic growth by paying taxes.
“The only way the State will benefit from this investment is to create an avenue where when these beneficiaries go through the system, they quickly get employed. And then when they are employed, we can tax them. It is through the taxes that we will get from them that will be an indirect or paying for the investment that has been made in them,” he added.
Connecting the situation to skilled labour emigration, Dr Amoah said it was important to conscientise the youth while in school so that they could accomplish their dreams in Ghana, rather than travelling abroad to seek for greener pastures.
Achieving this, he said, would require the creation of a system that would not only aid the transition of students into the world of work but motivate them to stay and work in Ghana.
“We realise that the individual who stays in Ghana and works and contributes through taxes gives a higher return on capital to the State than the one who travels out at a periodically send remittances,” he said.
“We need to also look at how best we can incentivise the private sector to absorb these individuals, because once they are employed, they are definitely going to pay taxes, and the economy will benefit from the taxes that they will pay,” Dr Amoah said.
Meanwhile, the current government has hinted of launching the ‘Adwumawura’, the One Million Coders and National Apprenticeship programmes as priority job creation initiatives in its first budget.
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