Quality Education and Tailor-made Skills Development is Needed to Solve Unemployment Problem in Ghana

Abstract

The issue of unemployment have been one of the major problems in the country for sometime now. Many opinion leaders, youth activist and other concerned groups and individuals have expressed their worries on the issue. In recent times there have been some group calling itself Unemployed Graduate Association of Ghana (UGAG) and many youth groups advocating for pressure on the governments to create jobs in the country as promised in their manifestos. Their intention was to send message out there to leaders about the fact that they have some skills to be implemented on the job markets but cannot find those jobs because there were no vacancies.The major question however is whether Ghana has various groups of unemployed youth or rather groups of unemployable youth who cannot fill the “numerous” jobs in the system.The unemployment problem of the country cannot be tackled properly when we always tried to use the same tactics to fight it over the years. We need to change our strategies because those used in the past, which are still being implemented today, do not help and would never help to defeat the cancer. We need vigorous and bold long-term strategies that would help resolve the problem in the longer future if not immediately. The various groups of politicians, with their different ideologies, should refrain from using the unemployment problems as a field for playing their political games. We also need to see our professional bodies of various fields taking the bull by the horn and collaborate with state institutions to tackle this problem. The professional institutions should be aware that tomorrows’ problems which are likely to confront our societies cannot be solved by their current competencies and that new and technologically advanced strategies are needed to tackle those problems. They have a very big role to play by ensuring that individuals who are aspiring to become members of their professional bodies have the fundamental understanding of the economic and socio-cultural problems that are currently confronting the nation and must also have skills and expertise to predict possible future confrontational socio-cultural economic problems.