The Deputy Minister for Employment and Labour Relations (MELR), Mr Bright Wireko-Brobby, has said that the informal sector guarantees employment for the youth, particularly fresh graduates and challenged them to create their jobs rather than depending on white-collar jobs.
According to him, there is a lot of fulfilment in an entrepreneur instead of chasing non-existent white-collar jobs.
He made the call in Accra at a Precision Quality and Standards Building Conference, organized by the Design and Technology Institute (DTI) for members from academia, entrepreneurs, artisans and fashion designers on the theme “the Precision Quality Policy Framework: A Building Block for Systems Change and Industrial Transformation.”
He added that Precision Quality aimed to integrate young people into the artisanal space, equip them to meet industrial standards in workplaces and ensure quality service delivery.
He said the informal sector acts as a safety net for the formal economy, by allowing the unemployed and unemployable to find work or start their businesses, boosting income and alleviating poverty in the country. He opined “I have not seen any wealthy person in the formal space who work in the Civil or Public Service. Every wealthy person in society is an entrepreneur. Anyone who can put his creativity into action and create jobs is rich, white collar jobs are not the only jobs one can do so we should not be reliant on the government to create jobs,” he said.
He explained that the government has implemented many interventions aimed at ensuring economic stability, transforming the economy and creating jobs for the unemployed, particularly the youth through skills training.
The Deputy Minister noted that with the adoption of Precision Quality to deliver services or products, the Ghanaian labour force would raise the quality of local products to meet international standardization.
On his part, the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Design Technology Institute (DTI), Mr Constance Swaniker, said Ghana can only kick start her industrialisation agenda when players in the informal sector fully understand what it takes to standardize their products and service.
Precision Quality is a term coined by the Design Technology Institute (DTI) of Ghana to highlight the value of precision in industry services and processes to ensure that goods, services and products are of world class.
The conference seeks to advocate for precision and quality delivery in the country’s production line and also highlighted the need for stakeholders to be deliberate in creating an ecosystem which produces entrepreneurs.