[ 2021-02-12 ]

Education Institutions should promote demand-driven skills - Lecturer
Dr William Godfred Cantah, Lecturer, Department of
Economics, University of Cape Coast, has called on
government to invest in local educational
institutions steer them towards demand-driven
skills to meet the needs of industry.








He said investment in the sector required more
deliberate emphasis on the human skills which
would make the graduates competitive in the world
of market for sustained economic growth.

Dr Cantah made the call in Accra during a
presentation on a research dubbed, “Assessment
of the Ghanaian Economy (2012-2020)”, supported
by Oxfam and organized by the Economic Governance
Platform.

The assessment was done on the basis of the
various goals and targets of government and its
agencies.

He said there was the need to develop real
expertise on skills for employability by investing
in deep, sustained conversations with employers,
and other workforce experts about critical skills
and how to translate them from education to
career.

A recent survey of employers by Gallup and Strada
Education Network found that three-quarters of
hiring managers see little connection between the
institution someone attended and their job
performance.

The Lecturer called for the need to bridge the gap
between faculty and employers by creating the time
and structures to incentivize faculty members to
engage substantively with employers, and the
workforce experts.

He recommended to government to support the
establishment of participatory and cooperative
mechanisms to enhance income and job security in
the informal sector.

Dr Cantah said the general assessment of the
country’s economy indicated that, the period
from 2012 -2020 had witnessed consistent growth
and improvements in key sectors of the economy.

The progress, he stressed, had rather been slow
and inadequate to push the country into an upper
middle income country.

On employment and unemployment rate, he said the
high growth performance of the economy over the
last eight years had not resulted in the
reductiion of rates of employment.

He said the rate of job creation seem to lag
behind economic growth rate by some 3.3 per cent
over the same period.

“At just 2.8 per cent, the average annual pace
of employment growth was deemed to be inadequate
for the creation of ample jobs opportunities,
especially for the youth, ”he said.

He said the inability of the growth to generate
employment had been attributed to slow growth of
the economy between 2014-2016, inadequate
financing schemes for Small and Medium Enterprises
and slow growth of overall labour demand and
limited absorption capacity of the economy.

On monetary and financial policies over the last
eight years, Dr Cantah said the country’s
monetary policy had been underpinned by inflation
targeting regime, with the focus of achieving
price stability.

He stated that the effectiveness of monetary
policy largely depended on the level of financial
development, stressing the period saw the
implementation of the Financial Sector Strategic
Plan which the aim to develop the financial
sector.

Mr Vitus Azeem, former Executive Director, Ghana
Integrity Initiative, called on government to
invest and expand agriculture for increased local
food security and export and as well improve the
livelihoods of farmers.

He urged government to address revenue leakages in
the public purse and expressed concern about
situation where some Ghanaians received double
allowances of being a Director of an organization
and Board member of different institution.

Some of the participants have called on government
to enact law to compel the informal sectors to pay
tax, since most of them do not.

Source - GNA

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