The Secretary-General of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), Joshua Ansah, has issued a strong call for Ghana to rethink its job creation strategy, insisting that the private sector must be placed at the centre of efforts to tackle the country’s growing unemployment crisis.
Speaking at the May Day celebrations on Friday, May 1, he argued that while government interventions in employment creation remain important, sustainable job growth will only come if the private sector is strengthened and empowered to drive production and expansion.
According to him, Ghana’s current economic structure is not doing enough to support local industries, warning that the country’s heavy dependence on imports is worsening the unemployment situation.
He stated that import trends are effectively draining job opportunities from the economy, stressing that “the large volumes of import that have saturated our market mean we are exporting jobs.”
Mr Ansah maintained that without a deliberate shift toward boosting domestic production, particularly in manufacturing and agro-processing, Ghana will continue to lose out on large-scale employment opportunities that could have been created locally.
He further called for targeted investments and policy reforms aimed at strengthening sectoral diversification and making local industries more competitive in both domestic and external markets.
He also criticised what he described as an economic environment that tends to favour imported goods over local production, arguing that this imbalance continues to stifle the growth of indigenous businesses and limit job creation potential.
Mr Ansah urged government to adopt a more private sector-driven development approach, insisting that long-term solutions to unemployment lie in building a strong and productive local economy anchored by domestic industries.
He concluded that strengthening Ghana’s production base remains the most viable pathway to addressing unemployment challenges in a sustainable way over the medium to long term.
