Politics of Friday, 17 June 2016
Source: citifmonline.com
Ladi Nylander
Education in Ghana must be geared towards job creation in order to minimise the rate of unemployment in the country, a prominent member of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP), Ladi Nylander, has said.
According to him, the unemployment situation in Ghana could largely be attributed to the mismatch between training in the educational institutions across the country and the job market, a trend which, he said, must be changed through a more purposeful system.
Unemployment in Ghana has been a major problem for all governments. In view of this, President John Dramani Mahama has said interventions such as the revived Komenda Sugar factory in the Central Region, will create about 7,000 direct and indirect jobs for the youth.
But speaking in an interview with Prince Minkah, host of the Executive Breakfast Show (EBS) on Class 91.3 FM on Friday, June 17, 2016, Mr. Nylander said training of graduates must be tilted towards job creation so that they can create jobs themselves after school.
“First of all, the education is a mismatch. People must be educated to serve a certain purpose. Education by itself sometimes is good …but education also must serve a purpose and our population [must] be trained such that they can help society create jobs because you need jobs, you need a source of livelihood…”
In Mr. Nylander’s view, government policies in the education sector must also be shaped toward that end. “Not only the training but the government policies. What is the vision? People will talk about what is in Singapore or Korea where the government actually has incubation or incubator practices or they create the environment that start-ups, people that have the skills [and are] being trained technically, can be given some amount of push”.
He said there was the need for a viable market to be created for goods produced locally, in order to keep Ghanaian businesses alive. He observed that without such a market, there is no way businesses could thrive.
“The most important aspect of any business is the market, the customer. You can have the smartest technological product, but if nobody wants to use it then forget it. Every product must have a market and the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) says that we will use the resources of state…Dr. Papa Kwesi Nduom [flagbearer of the PPP] once said that if he becomes the president and let’s say there is a reception, everything that will go into it, across the length and breadth, will be from Ghana whether it’s palm wine, plantain chips. That way, you are empowering everybody…these days all kinds of goods are coming from China. In other words, we are exporting employment to people in China, to people in Malaysia because we are importing their goods, which Ghanaians could do.”