…to export over-produced labour
Government is taking steps to formalize a process aimed at exporting over-produced skilled labour to a list of countries who are in dire need of their immediate services.
Minister for Labour and Employment Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awuah revealed this during the sod cutting ceremony of construction of the Ghanaian-German Centre for Jobs, Migration and Reintegration (GGC) Office in Accra; which upon completion would provide services for the local populace and people who return from abroad seeking for support in their social and economic reintegration.
“There are a lot of Ghanaians that have skills which may not even be of immediate use in Ghana now. Your excellency [referring to German Ambassador Ghana, Christoph Retzlaff], before you came here, you saw a number of our nurses demonstrating. We have over-produced some of them and we are looking for alternative markets for them”, he noted.
Through the sector Ministry, measures are being laid down to have data in order to be abreast with the right quantity of a particular skill and the number that need to be exported.
Government in 2017 placed a ban on recruitment labour for export to some countries, most especially the Gulf nations following many reported cases of abuse faced by some Ghanaians working there and further instructed the Labour Department to stop issuing licenses to employment agencies to engage in such business.
Formalizing the process means that government would therefore need to carry out effective labour regime with countries that have established bilateral labour agreement with Ghana and would commit to the process by ensuring the well being and security of workers to be exported.
Late last year, government initiated processes to lift the ban on export of labour as proposals for bilateral agreement for lifting of the moratorium were presented to the Attorney-General’s Department for scrutiny.
However, some labour experts have said job creation – either within or exported, and employment promotion intervention alone may not be the panacea to addressing the labour upheavals in the country, but effective migration requires instituting measures and mechanisms that would create synergies between various aspect of the phenomenon.
Whereas government aims to carry out this activity, it also remains a fact that for instance, there are a number of hospitals in the rural communities that are in dire need of health professionals to augment the load of work.
By Dundas Whigham
