Govt Using Sack-and-Replace Tactics to Create 1m Jobs

The Minority has disputed government evidence claiming to have created over one million jobs in 14 months, describing the data as fanthom figures.

Former deputy Finance minister Ato Forson told Joy News, the government has only filled vacancies with sympathisers after sacking those believed to be sympathisers of the opposition party.

This sack-and-replace tactics, he said, is seen in places like COCOBOD where the government claims it has employed 56,000 persons to spray cocoa farms.

The School Feeding programme where 6,475 people have been employed is also another example of this tactics, he said.

“The net effect is zero. These are not additional jobs”, he told Joy News Emefa Apawu.

Ato Forson also claimed credit for the former government indicating that some of the jobs were created under President Mahama.

The NPP only came to complete the administrative process of recruiting some 3,500 people into the Interior ministry where 3,500 were employed in police, immigration, prisons and fire services.

These recruits were commissioned as early as January, the same month the Mahama government handed over power.

The Planting for Food and Jobs program did not escape the former deputy minister’s scrutiny after the government claimed it had created more than 750,000 jobs.

Ato Forson said a chunk of the jobs in this sector are farmers who had been in farming before the NPP government introduced the programme.

These farmers only enrolled onto the program “so what are they telling us?”, he said.

Ato Forson is even more shocked that the government could claim it has employed more than 108,000 at SSNIT and claimed it cannot be true.

“We need to ask questions”.

“I don’t know the person who is compiling this list…whether he understands what job creation is”

But the deputy minister for Employment and Labour Bright Wereko Brobbey defended the figure explaining it could have been more.

The numbers were arrived at after a “cursory” look through the ministries and government departments. They are “modest figures”, he said.

He rejected Ato Forson’s sack-and-replace claim noting the government has rather adopted “innovative” measures like adding to the existing workforce at the Ghana School Feeding Programme.

The deputy minister insisted most of these public sector jobs were advertised.

“Sometimes, we sit in our office and think we alone are working,” he said, stressing the data is credible.