Upper East region has highest unemployment rate - 2015 Survey reveals

The Ghana Statistical service on Thursday published the 2015 Ghana Labour Survey at a short ceremony in Accra.

According to the report the Upper East region has recorded the highest number of unemployed citizens at the rate of 18.4% followed by Upper West with 14.3%.

The survey has pitched the total unemployment rate in the country at 12% as stated in their report.

But speaking at the event the Minister of employment and labour relations Ignatius Baffour-Awuah has called for the annual conduct of the survey to help tackle the labour issues as they emerge

“The essence of such a fact-finding like this is that if it is not delivered on time it becomes, excuse me to use the word, useless. It may not be relevant to issues that may be pertaining at the time it was released. Yes, we encourage people to go into research but we also encourage them to release them timely so at least it becomes relevant to events happening and problems in the country. It is going to give us the full picture of the unemployment situation. It is going to give us the true picture of even people who are employed what type of jobs are they doing how are the jobs stretch…..”

In reaction to the delay in the launching of the survey report, the Coordinator for the 2015 labour survey Peter Peprah told Class FM that the tension of the election 2016 would not have permitted them to launch the survey in 2016.

“The data was collected in December 2015 and analyses and report writing and validation were carried out in 2016 the report was ready, it was published in December 2016. You and I know at that time everyone was thinking about politics. Creating room to disseminate this was very difficult so we decided to keep it when everything was over and just after the elections, the work of the transitional team also have to affect our timeline a bit.”