Work on your jobless growth and stop blame game on unemployment – Prof. John Gatsi

Dean of the School of Finance at the University Of Cape Coast, Prof. John Gatsi, has advised the government and the private sector to stop their blame game over unemployment and rather concentrate on spawning solutions to the problem.

In a write-up, Prof. Gatsi dismisses a culture of blaming educational institutions for supposedly churning out ill-trained graduates as a tired fanciful excuse.

“It seems industry, largely the private sector, wants to blame universities and do not want to participate to support to sharpen the skills of students. Government is expected to do the needed investment to support the universities instead of blaming educational institutions,” Gatsi wrote.

“The fact is the economy is not creating jobs. We describe the growth of the economy as jobless growth so for those managing jobless growth to blame educational institutions for unemployment is unfortunate and if this is allowed to fester a wrong solution will be given without results.”

To buttress his point that the quality of training and equipping of university graduates is not the problem, Prof. Gatsi points out that those pushing such arguments are themselves, university graduates.

“Am wondering why we have about 99% Ghanaian graduates employed in all institutions including the private sector yet we want to downgrade our graduates. Over 99% of Ghanaian graduates are the ones working in the Bank of Ghana, all the commercial banks, Databank, accounting and auditing firms. In fact, majority of workers in the Ministry of Finance are Ghanaian graduates,” Gatsi noted.

In the case of the central government, he points out that since 2001, successive governments have spawned shallow programs to fight unemployment that have only ultimately failed.

 “When the pressures of unemployment surge, government officials are quick to find what to blame…at the end of the day the situation is as if nothing had been done,” Dr. Gatsi wrote.

He advised the government and private sector to be innovative and come up with workable ideas, such as on-the-job training, rather than continue to blame universities.