The Economic Mechanics Of NABCO

Job creation strategies have been instituted by many political parties immediately after independence till today with various headings and intents. The youth of this country must be employed anyway after a successful completion of their academic programmes at Universities and other higher institutions of learning.

Nation Builders’ Corps as it is themed, proves viable to many as one of the best strategies to solve and half the unemployment woes of this Country. The intents of the government and those behind this programme are noble and clear, to employ the youth who in turn, will contribute to the development of the country. That is perfect in the perspective of economists and social thinkers alike. What are the economic mechanics of this programme?

The units created as the desired sectors to help achieve the goal of the government are appropriately expressed. Units like Educate Ghana, Digitize Ghana, Heal Ghana,Enterprise Ghana, Revenue Ghana etc have good captions but have inherent economic mechanical problems that if not properly checked will bring huge economic challenges in reaching the purpose for which the programme was established for. The programme has already met rejections by some health professionals as being an affront to them in terms of their employment rights. They had expected a different means of employment rather than this.

Without duplication of roles and responsibilities as well as modules like those of the YEA programme, the programme will be embraced by many as one of the best attempts by any government to create jobs and use the expertise of the academically trained youth. This is because the effectiveness of this altogether new programme is expected among many other things to bring many new things on board including developing better skills, developing and instilling work ethics, exposing people to the work environment and helping them accumulate experiences etc

Many people are concerned about the value of the contributions of these eager-to-be engaged youth as a whole. The fact is, many of the fields earmarked to absorb the graduates are in themselves not effective with regard to their mother agencies. To educate Ghanaians, the graduates need to be conversant with methods of teaching and should have gone through a thorough training to acquire skills necessary to be used in the classroom. Then, an ineffective unit if not properly checked will be created and the payment of salaries will ultimately cause inflation.

There must be training programmes for all the modules especially the Revenue Ghana, Educate Ghana, Enterprise Ghana and many others. The effective workings of the various sub programmes has been and will be questioned after subjecting them to series of analysis. The porous nature of the revenue system in the country should be a source of worry to the Revenue Ghana Module. Enterprise Ghana should have programmes that will equip its graduates with employable skills after exiting the programme.

The observation over the years of state-sponsored programmes has been the lack of skills development. The programme is not a permanent job creation enterprise and therefore, the state should deal with it as a transit point to train the people to be employed.

This programme if properly executed will enhance the employable skills of the graduate, will help them accumulate more experiences as they will be exposed to the work environment, it will solve the social problems of the country and the people to be engaged. The emphasis therefore should be on training the graduates rather than focusing on solving their employment needs currently.

The weak aspect of this programme will be inflationary concerns as the government is expected to dole out huge sums of money. If the ventures are not productive to cause a corresponding value creation as against the money given out as salary, there will be inflation. This should not be taken as a welfare economics issues in just addressing unemployment challenges. It should be a comprehensive agenda to solve many problems at this time.

Emmanuel Kwabena Wucharey
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