Employment Minister-Designate “Hot” Over 3million Job Claim

Employment and Labor Relations Minister-Designate, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, has entangled himself after he claimed that the Akufo-Addo government created three million jobs during its first term from 2017 to 2020.

The Minority side of the Appointments Committee is demanding a detailed breakdown of the jobs from the nominee who appeared before the Committee today and made the fantabulous claim.

“Minister-nominee can you state how was the 3 million jobs created and the distribution, you want to share the statistics with us, sector by sector,” quizzed Hon. Haruna Iddrisu, Ranking Member on the Appointments Committee and Leader of the Minority Group in Parliament.

In response, the minister-designate promised; “Hon. Chair, I will make the details available to the committee when I get back to.”

Hon. Haruna Iddrissu asked him to specify whether the 3million jobs he claims his government has created are the public sector or the private sector, to which Ignatius Baffour Awuah, claimed it was in both sectors.

“On the number of jobs, yes it is true on 1st May 2018 I indicated that the government of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had created approximately 1 million jobs, even though I don’t have the exact figures for the end of 2020, the last time we reported on was in September 2020, and the figure was around 3 million jobs,” Baffour-Awuah claimed.

Interestingly, the claiming is coming at a time that the government has been admitting that all facets of the Economy suffered downward growth because of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

The Akufo-Addo government is also notoriously blamed for destroying more jobs than any government with its financial sector clean-up which is estimated to have destroyed hundreds of thousands of jobs in the Financial sector during the first tenure of the government.

Meanwhile, Ignatius Baffour Awuah was confronted over his 3million jobs creation claim by Hon. Samson Ahi, MP for Bodi, (Western Region), who pointed out that Mr. Baffour-Awuah’s claim conflicts with a different figure that Vice President Bawumia has been giving in the matter of government’s job creation record.

He pointed out that on August 13, 2020, Dr. Bawumia said that the government had created 2 million jobs contrary to the 3 million jobs stated by the Minister-designate for Employment and Labour Relations.

Eventually, Haruna Iddrissu placed it on notice that the Appointments Committee is expecting a detailed breakdown of the 3million jobs that the government supposedly created in its first term from Ignatius Baffour Awuah.