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'How will your party create jobs?' - NDC, NPP, PPP youth leaders trade jabs

By MyJoyOnline
PPP 'How will your party create jobs?' - NDC, NPP, PPP youth leaders trade jabs
APR 18, 2016 LISTEN

With two million new youth eligible to vote in a crucial 2016 elections, three youth leaders of some political parties struggled to outdo each other on which party deserves the youth vote.

NDC National Youth Organiser Sidii Abubakar Musah, NPP National Youth Organiser Sammy Awuku and PPP counterpart Felix Mantey were on the Joy FM Super Morning Show Monday to provide specifics on job-creation policies for a youth who claim, attractive policies will determine how they vote in the November 2016 election.

PPP’s Felix Mantey promised a significant patronage of made-in-Ghana goods will help create jobs. But his argument run into trouble when he argued that locally produced goods are already cheaper than imported goods.

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Felix Mantey
He said businesses are struggling partly because of the poor state of Ghana's currency in relation to the country's major trading partners. The cedi since January 2014 lost at least 43% of its value to the US dollar . The PPP leader punched government for supervising a culture of importation said to be responsible for the cedis' predicament.

But his ‘how’ option to solving this problem was by putting together a ‘better economic team’. Pushed for specifics, Mantey said a PPP-government has a proven job-creation guru in the person of its flagbearer Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom.

Pushed even further, the PPP representative explained there will be massive investment in agriculture.

Touching on agriculture as a source for job-creation NDC National Youth organizer Sidii Abubakar Musah claimed the governing party has pushed in more than 81,200 jobs through the Youth in Agriculture programme.

There is more he said, adding 200 jobs from the Kumasi Shoe Factory and 2,000 other jobs from $90m Savannah Diamond Cement factory set up in April 2015. The youth organizer also claimed 265 jobs have come in from the Ghana Gas company.

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Sidii Abubakar Musah
All these initiatives have made a “huge” difference in an unemployment crisis which he admitted has not been properly quantified. "There is no direct statistics" the youth leader said. But comparing the NPP's record between 2001 to 2008, the difference is huge.

He said progress in job-creation is “evidence-based”, a reference to a novel strategy used by the president in which he brought beneficiaries of his policies to parliament.

He called on the youth to trust the President. "If there is any party that you give them hope then it’s the NDC...Mahama holds your future".

Contributing via telephone, NPP National Youth Organiser Sammy Awuku attacked government, pointing out contradictions in its figures on job-creation.

In 2009-12010, a Deputy Minister, Okudzeto Ablakwa claimed government had created 1.6 million jobs but in a book cataloguing achievements, the government in 2016 says it has created 100,000 so far.

"We have a serious problem. You see, anytime you make propaganda the focal point of your economic development, that is where it lands us all".

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Putting what he believes is his party's best foot foward, Awuku said his party has promised to provide tax incentives to businesses that employ fresh graduates. He said the existing 1% tax rebate is not significant enough.

For youth in the informal sector, Sammy Awuku stressed his party will pump more resources into the National Vocational Training Institute (NVTI) to provide skills training. "The NVTI lacks the support that is required to make it up and running is lost" he said.

Not to be outdone, the NDC National Youth Organiser criticised the NPP's trackrecord when it was in power from 2001 to 2008.

"Before NPP came to power in 2000, they promised 'Jobs For All' that was the promise that they gave to Ghanaians... what were they able to do?" he said.

The youth leader also claimed that under President John Mahama there are more investors in this country than ever before. He brushed off criticisms of pervasive corruption under Mahama's government.

"It is just a perception...corruption does not exist" he said.

Story by Ghana|myjoyonline.com|[email protected]

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