Dear President,

I write to you as a proud citizen of your country and applaud you for the good work done in the last four year especially on the implementation of free secondary school for all and other impactful policies implemented in the last four years. Thank you.

Before I proceed, let me take this opportunity to congratulate you on your success in just ending elections which you won with all the attacks against you in few months run up to the elections from special prosecutor and the opposition NDC. Once again congratulations. Your win is a great example of how hard work pays. You have won an election at a time the country faces enormous challenges.

From coronavirus pandemic, sanitation, jobs for young people to dealing decisively with corruption, controlling expenditure and at the same time creating a new future for more than 28 million people you serve. It is a responsibility I know you do not take lightly and a task that must be achieved by assembling the best mind and right talent pool available to you. 

Recruitment 

As you take over affairs of this country again, do not forget the teeming young people struggling to get what they can call job and place their life on you. More than ever, we still have a lot of young people who are still looking for jobs and keep on believing one day their lifestyle could change. I know in run up to 2016 so many changes were made so that teachers and most public services recruitment could be done only in Accra. While I agree that, the final say in these recruitments could be Accra, it is not representative enough.

We have a situation where so many graduates in a particular community looking for jobs but do not have anyone to link them to Accra. They see teachers being posted to their school without knowing how the recruitment was done. To create fair and balance way of recruitment we need to reverse back to old system where the district directors and headmasters of second cycle institutions have a role in the recruitment strategy into our schools and other government offices.

I believe that recruitment strategy must be aligned to the overall organizational business strategy and therefore allowing the manager to assess will be a future employee and recommend him or she for employment is the right way to go. We must decentralize the recruitment in our educational institutions, hospitals, and other government agencies so that the people we recruit will represent the communities we serve.

Tackling the financial challenges of the Pandemic 

The financial constraints coronavirus has placed on the country is enormous and its impact cannot be easily be quantified. So many countries all over the world are in same boat. Since 2008 and /2009 financial meltdown, there had not been any challenging time like this in our live time. I believe that as you take over for another 4-year term, we must tackle the challenges brought because of coronavirus and deliberately inject capital into the economy and support small business to keep afloat and keep jobs as well.

Resolving the financial challenges because of the coronavirus will provide the environment for new jobs to be created. Coronavirus has thought us a lesson that there are so many areas of our economy that need a capital injection. It tells us we must invest in our communication infrastructure and find ways to bring the price of data down so that a child living in the remotest part of the country can have access to the internet for educational and other purposes. 

Changing the way, we work in Public sector 

The public sector of every economy is particularly important. Strong public sector can help drive the private sector to achieve success the country is looking for. Imagine a country, where a driver takes so many years to acquire a licence so that he or she can drive that truck from the doorstep of the farm to the marketplace. If the institutions put in place to serve the people or the private sectors do not work, do not expect the private sector to function well.

That is why I am with the view that Ghana’s public service needs reform that can help it function well in the 21st century. The post-independent structure has outlived its usefulness and must be done away with and create a public sector that can serve well the needs of the citizens in this century. That means creating a governance architecture team behind every ministry that will oversee analysis, projects, and delivery to the people. 

Tackling Sanitation Menace & Corruption 

The future will be determined by what we do today. Whether the next generations of Ghanaians and most of our people will do well and bury the cycle of poverty in our communities depends on what we do today. Today, we have a clear choice to end corruption and mismanagement right here in our country and usher in a new era of free and fair society. We have a chance to create decent housing for poor people on our streets while making sure that folks with larger income pay their fair share of that for the growth of the country.

Today, we have a clear choice to plan our cities and task our district assemblies to do their work and make sure no garbage is piled up on a floor until a loan is secured from World Bank or else where to remove it. We have a clear choice of collecting garbage from the doorsteps of our people without having to carry garbage in a long distance before throwing it on a floor. Accra must lead and show the way for all to follow. We must find money and provide each household garbage cans which includes waste and recycling. Then draw a plan to collect them weekly from the houses. This has potential to create a lot of jobs if we get it right.

Creating jobs & 1D1F

Mr. President, you must continue the One District One Factory (1D1F) agenda because is the right thing to do and something that can create jobs and remove millions from poverty across the nation. Ghana cannot continue to be a consumption country.  We must also develop our own products for others to consume especially at a time we have African wide free trade policy in place. We must accelerate this program and invest heavily till we have a factory at every district and every corner of the street. Having factory in every district will also help open the district up and improve the local economy for other economic activities to flourish and we must pursue this as a country with all the seriousness it deserves.

Mr. President, we must continue to invest in young people ingenuity and help them to innovate and create jobs for our people. Today, we can turn the tables upside down and create wealth for majority of our people by building incubation centres in every region of the country where we can harness creative talents and develop them for market. If we want to fail, we must fail fast and learn from it and move forward. This has potential to create a lot of jobs and bring dignity to majority of our people.

****

Prince Akyereko is a Senior Business Systems Analyst with TD Bank Group
and NPP Canada Youth Organizer