The Founding President of IMANI Africa, Franklin Cudjoe, has raised serious concerns over Ghana’s unemployment crisis, highlighting the stark disparity in the ongoing security services recruitment exercise.
Mr. Cudjoe’s comments follow a disclosure by Interior Minister Alhaji Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak on Wednesday, March 11.
The Minister revealed that while over 105,000 applicants have progressed to the medical stage of the recruitment process, only 5,000 positions are available this year.
This follows an online aptitude test that drew hundreds of thousands of applicants.
In a statement reacting to the development, Mr. Cudjoe noted that the overwhelming number of applications estimated at 500,000 for less than 40,000 slots across the security agencies paints a grim picture of the job market.
“It is not healthy for a country when many of its young and able citizens want to apply for public sector jobs, apparently because they are safe jobs and not necessarily productive,” he stated.
He proposed reforms to the application process, suggesting that fees should be waived for initial applications and only charged at later stages to ease the financial burden on job seekers.
Furthermore, Mr. Cudjoe linked the crisis to a misalignment in the education system.
He lamented that polytechnics, intended to produce technical and vocational experts, have been flooded with students pursuing grammar and management studies.
“We must reverse this,” he urged, advocating for a shift in public education budgets to favor technical and vocational training to equip the youth with skills for the industrial sector.
