Alfred Asiedu Walker, an independent presidential candidate for the upcoming election, has promised to create jobs should he win the December 7 elections.
He said he would intensify investment in rural infrastructure, telecommunications, improve basic and secondary schools and quality health facilities.
Speaking at a programme dubbed; “Morning Starr” on Starr FM, Accra on Thursady October 29, Mr Walker called for a concerted effort from all Ghanaians to overcome the country’s challenges.
“We are going to create 5,000 jobs per region, that is actually on the low side. As at 80,000 employment immediately, that is for a start.
Imagine, the first year, 80,000 jobs have been absorbed. We are also going to bring back parks and gardens to create employment.
“We are talking about the unemployment graduates. I don’t believe anybody who has graduated from the University will go into farming at this stage because they don’t have the credit worthiness, they will walk to the bank and they wont get the loan to buy the equipment, we know that and even if they do have it they are not going to be able to sustain it because you need a mechanize farming to produce enough.”
Mr Walker touching on how he is going to implement these plans, he said; “What I am saying is, they have studied IT. Biology, Chemistry, Physics and I don’t expect these gentlemen and ladies to go and stand there and direct traffic, they are not traffic wardens.
“They are doing works that has no relation to what they studied”
“I know the government and the public sector cannot absorbed everybody and that’s a fact so we should not even encourage government’s payroll to increase, this is why they are borrowing to pay salaries which is not advisable. We must change the system and do things differently.”
“The Ministry of Education should be resourced properly, the students who have studied and graduated from the University or the Polytechnic have the technical know-how, the IT know-how, the Biology research and the Chemistry know-how, why don’t they partner with the teachers in the classrooms because we believe anybody who has graduated from the University is certainly not going to stay in the classroom for more than two years.”
“Mostly likely, psychologically, they would wish to continue to do their masters programme or some professional studies so therefore the national service is going to be restructured where these students will be given the opportunity to work within the classroom to impact knowledge to help the teacher trainee who is also challenged because they don’t have the equipment, IT courses and don’t even have a continued education to upgrade themselves (in most cases).
“With this system, I believe we can provide the unemployment graduates with 20,000 – 50,000 every year.”
Mr Alfred Asiedu Walker further stressed that if politicians did not change their style, there would be absolutely no change and the people would continue to complain about the same issues such as crumbling schools, inadequate healthcare, high unemployment and corruption.
He therefore called on Ghanaians to come together as one people with a common bond of citizenship, goals and aspirations and head for a common destiny.