The National Democratic Congress’s (NDC’s) Sammy Gyamfi, the director of communications, has revealed the ludicrous contradictions in the employment and labor relations minister Ignatius Baffour Awuah’s and vice president Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia‘s figures regarding the jobs they assert the government has created.
Earlier, Dr. Bawumia asserted that the government has created 2 million jobs since 2017 in his speech at the national Eid-ul-Fitr celebration in Independence Square. He also mentioned opportunities for the youth.
When he asserted that the government created over two million jobs in the public and private sectors using “verifiable data” at a health walk in Mpraeso, the public questioned his claims.
He supported his claim with facts as well.
Dr. Bawumia wrote on Facebook that he provided the list to show “naysayers” who questioned the statistics that the numbers are accurate and to encourage them to “do away with negative thinking.”
Sammy Gyamfi said the gullible NPP supporters who believe Dr. Bawumia’s dubious claim that the government has created more than 2.2 million jobs require “urgent psychiatric examination.” Bawumia had claimed that the government had created 2 million jobs for the youth of Ghana.
He claimed that during the first term of the NPP government, which ran from 2017 to 2020, 3 million jobs—including both public and private sector positions—were created. Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, the minister-designate for employment and labor relations, made this claim to the Parliament’s vetting committee in February 2021.
As if the lie wasn’t enough, on September 16, 2022, Ignatius Baffour-Awuah claimed that the government had created more than 5.3 million jobs while speaking at the opening of the 2022 Ghana Job Fair in Sunyani, Bono Region.
Sammy Gyamfi revealed that on April 27, 2023, “the Liar-in-Chief of the NPP,” Alhaji Bawumia, claimed that the government had created 2,255,928 jobs since 2017, excluding jobs created under the Planting for Food and Jobs Program (PF&J) and the NIA, and that the 3 million jobs they claimed to have created by the end of 2020 had miraculously increased to over 5.3 mi. This was only six (6) months after the Employment Minister of their second term.
He went on to say that on August 30, 2021, Dr. Owusu Afriyie Akoto, the agriculture minister at the time, was said to have publicly stated that the government had produced 2 million jobs through the PF&J program.
He questioned the agriculture minister’s methodology for drawing that conclusion from the data he provided and exhorted all astute Ghanaians to recognize that “Bawumia is simply a liar.”
He said that according to data from the Ghana Statistical Service, the unemployment rate rose from 8.4% in 2016 to about 14% as of 2022. To make matters worse, the government announced a complete hiring freeze in the public sector in its 2023 budget, which further exacerbated the situation.
Sammy Gyamfi claimed that the administration of Dr. Bawumia and President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has destroyed thousands of jobs as a result of its bad policies.
He pointed out that the government shouldn’t make a big deal about creating jobs.
In light of the enormous resource envelope that has accrued to them, he claimed that their record of job creation is the most appalling in the history of the Fourth Republic.
