EU to support Employment Ministry with €31.6 million
The European Union (EU) has earmarked a 31.6 million Euro grant to support the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations to address problems confronting the employment sector.
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The money will be used in four specific areas, which are social protection system, the national employment programme (NEP), Technical and Vocational Education and
Training (TVET) and small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
The grant will also support the needs assessment of the Labour Department of the ministry.
The Ambassador and Head of the EU Delegation in Ghana, Mr William Hanna, announced this when he led a delegation to pay a courtesy call on the sector Minister, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, in Accra yesterday.
EU support
In 2015, the EU provided 190 million euros as grant to Ghana.
Mr Hanna said one key focus of the EU support to Ghana this year would be to assist the country to address problems that hampered its employment sector.
Touching on the areas to benefit from the support, he said under the social protection system programme, attention would be given to marginalised people.
On the NEP, he said the focus would be to find solutions to unemployment issues and how best Ghana could expand its employment sector.
On the TVET and SMEs, he said the support would be to empower the youth to go into vocational training where they had advantage of becoming self-employed, adding that more assistance would also be given to entrepreneurs in the SMEs.
Employment Minister
Mr Iddrisu said the support would go a long way to assist Ghana to enhance its economic outlook this year.
He said over the past years, the government had come up with interventions to address the unemployment and labour issues in the country, indicating that most of the interventions had started yielding fruits.
He said the needs assessment programme would help position the Labour Department of the ministry to fully implement effective policies and strategies that would help address the unemployment problems.
He said the government would take difficult decisions to ensure that the challenges affecting the employment and labour sector were solved.