SEMINAR FOR UNEMPLOYED GRADUATES HELD IN TAMALE

SEMINAR FOR UNEMPLOYED GRADUATES HELD IN TAMALE
From: Joseph Ziem, Tamale
Over 500 graduates and students from the various tertiary institutions in the Northern Region have attended a 2 day youth orientation seminar to receive training on how to write attractive Curriculum Vitae and resume to secure jobs.
The seminar among other things sought to re-orient the consciousness of jobless graduates and students to prepare them as some of them would like to move into private entrepreneurship or business in order to reduce Ghana’s unemployment rate which is sky-high.
Many scholars define a graduate as someone who has successfully completed any post secondary/tertiary education be it training college, polytechnic, university, etc.
The International Labour Organisation (ILO) also defines unemployed as the numbers of the economically active population who are without work but available for and seeking work, including people who have lost their jobs and those who have voluntarily left work.
So, the current labour force (those between ages 15 to 64) in Ghana according to www.nationmaster.com is estimated to be 11.3 million people. Besides, the current unemployment rate in Ghana is estimated to be about 20 percent in 2008 compared with rate of 11 percent in 2000.
The seminar dubbed: “Northern Ghana Youth Orientation Initiative Training Seminar” was under the auspices of Ajan Social Network and the World Bank Ghana Office including Action-Aid Ghana and Alaye Consults and Investments Limited.
Saani Bashiru, a resource person and also Consultant to Alaye Consults and Investments Limited said the seminar would be used as an attempt to educate the unemployed graduates on how to make prolific use of their talents.
He lamented that the unavailability of job opportunities in the three Northern Regions had rendered graduates unproductive.
Mr. Bashiru bemoaned that the situation was worrying hence the need to impact knowledge on the unemployed graduates and students to devise means of making good living or find some work doing.
He disclosed that the second phase of the seminar would be replicated in the Upper East and Upper West Regions.
In a speech read for him, Moses Bukari Mabengba, the Northern Regional Minister lauded the seminar under the theme: “Preparing the young graduate for the entrepreneurship and the job market” and urged the participants to put into practice the knowledge shared with them.
Mr. Mabengba reiterated government’s commitment to create employment opportunities for the youth but appealed to them to take advantage of such seminars to create their own enterprises.