Ghana’s President-elect, John Dramani Mahama, has affirmed that his administration will prioritize sustainable job creation over what he calls “artificial initiatives” that fail to address the long-term unemployment challenges in the country.
In an interview with VOA’s Paul Ndiho on Saturday, December 14, Mahama specifically criticized the Nation Builders Corps (NABCO), an initiative introduced by the outgoing New Patriotic Party (NPP) government in 2018, describing it as ineffective and unsustainable.
“We are not interested in the artificial job creation measures that have been done in the past like NABCO where young people were taken through three years, paid an allowance, and promised that they will be graduated into jobs.
“At the end of the process, they have been abandoned. We are not going to do those artificial job creation measures,” Mahama stated.
Instead, Mahama emphasised the role of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) in providing genuine opportunities for training and job orientation.
“We already have the Youth Employment Agency that is creating those opportunities for training and orientation for jobs,” he added.
About NABCO
NABCO was designed to address graduate unemployment by providing temporary employment opportunities in various sectors such as education, health, and agriculture.
The programme, which initially targeted 100,000 beneficiaries, faced challenges over time, including delayed stipend payments and lack of permanent employment pathways, leading to disillusionment among participants.
