I felt sad about the huge number of unemployed youth at job fair – YEA Boss

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Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), Justin Koduah Frimpong, has admitted that the government has more to do in dealing with the rising levels of unemployment among the country’s youth.

He says the thousands of youth who showed up at the YEA job fair is proof that the lack of employment opportunities for graduates is a huge hurdle both the agency and the government must immediately cross and find a lasting solution to.

Speaking on Eyewitness News, Mr. Frimpong indicated that, he was saddened by the turnout and is prepared to liaise with other stakeholders to put the agency on its toes as a means of dealing with Ghana’s unemployment situation going forward.

“At a point, I felt sad. To be honest, looking at the number of youth who were there and the level of desperation that set in, then I really realized that, as an agency and as a country, we need to do more, although it is understandable that we are a developing country and year after year, a number of the youth want to join the labour market, which is why we are having this challenge. ”

“But my team and I realized that it is good that we have started this job fair to partly deal with the issue of unemployment in this country. We will go back to the office to see how we can also scale up.”

Many unemployed youth on Thursday massed up at the Accra International Conference Centre for the YEA Job Fair in search of jobs from several employers.

The youth, numbering over 1,000, were seen standing in long queues, with many of them struggling to enter the building to secure jobs with companies.

But the YEA says although expectations were high, it is satisfied with the outcome of the first day.

“I must say that what transpired has really vindicated the decision of the management of the YEA to move away from models like community police and nursing to more of job facilitation and liaising. So far, we are happy and satisfied with the number of companies that came and gave employment opportunities for the youth”, Mr. Frimpong added.