Ghana should export labour - Alex Hamah

Tema, Aug. 17, GNA - Mr. John Alex Hamah, Veteran Trade Unionist and the National Secretary of Trade Union Congress Veterans Association of Ghana, says Ghana can solve her unemployment situation by exporting labour to other countries.

He observed that the exportation of labour is very necessary because the country has got experienced, youthful, dynamic and committed labor adding that 'Ghana prides itself as one of the countries with well informed and well educated workers.'

Mr. Hamah was speaking in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in reaction to Mr. Osafo Marfo, the Senior Minister's opinion that Ghana must export labour to other countries.

He called on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to collaborate with the Ministry of Employment and Labour to initiate a progressive policy to enhance, strengthen and reorganize labour attaches in Ghanaian Embassies and High Commissions across the globe to find out the employment shortfalls and demands of the countries and facilitate negotiations for the engagement of Ghanaian workers.

'Then Ghana should set off a dynamic and progressive policy to register the unemployed youth in this country. Ghana is one of the fastest growing countries in the world, and I do not doubt at all that Ghana could export doctors, engineers, pilots, drivers, agricultural technicians, teachers, etc. They are not surplus labor,' he informed.

He observed that the suggestion by Mr. Marfo was very progressive, and can be a foreign policy initiative of the President Nana Addo Danquah Akufo-Addo's government to help other African countries solve their human resource problems.

He however cautioned that such a programme should be well organized and structured, otherwise a time would come when Ghana would be short of labour 'and this is the negative ally of this progressive programme.'

He added that 'this gives the Ghanaian the possibility of going abroad to work as a real expatriate not as a surplus laborer or employee. When we were building the motorway we had to bring laborers from Burkina Faso because most Ghanaians were not prepared to work as labourers in their own country so it is not only the elite professionals that could be exported, even laborers could.'

He said embassies must be dynamic centres where Ghana could be branded and sold to help other African countries and Ghanaians to develop.

'We need press attaches in our embassies to give publicity to Ghana, we need even religious atttaches like the Saudi's do; we also need educational attaches,'

GNA

By Alexander Nyarko Yeboah, GNA