An 11-member National Steering Committee (NSC) to formulate and co-ordinate labour-based policies for capacity building to increase employment in the infrastructure sector of the country has been inaugurated in Accra. The NSC, which is under the chairmanship of Mr Kobbina Amoah, the Director of Microfinance at the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, has the mandate to steer the affairs of the Employment Intensive Investment Policy Programme of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Government of Ghana. The principal elements of the programme include the promotion and adoption of a national policy on the use of labour-based methods and increasing knowledge and capacity in both public and private sectors for planning and implementation of labour-based technology. It is also to create linkages, partnerships and information sharing among stakeholders in a coordinated manner. The Deputy Minister of Employment and Social Welfare, Mr Antwi Boasiako-Sekyere, who inaugurated the committee, said unemployment remained a priority of the government, although the availability of a credible data on employment figures was still uncertain. He said the perceived increase in unemployment, especially among the youth, had been a great source of worry and concern to the government. He, however, noted that over the past years measures and strategies had been put in place to reverse the trend of unemployment. Those measures, he said, included the ILO pilot Decent Work Programme, the National Youth Employment and the Mass Cocoa Spraying programmes. He revealed that to provide a more sustainable solution to the unemployment programme, a national employment policy and its implementation action plan was developed by the Ministry of Employment in 2008 to provide the framework for addressing the issue• He further said that as a follow-up to the policy and action plan, a national validation workshop had been scheduled for this year to review the action plan to facilitate its implementation. Mr. Boasiako-Sekyere pointed out that expanding infrastructure for growth was one of the four main visions of the government and that the construction industry had since 1990 been growing at an average rate of nine per cent per annum. "It, therefore, has the potential of high sectoral employment depending on how we manage it," he stressed. To that end, he said, the experience of previous interventions such as the pilot labour-based contractor roads project, the labour-based land conservation and smallholder rehabilitation project and the Northern Region Pilot Infrastructure Project had shown that the creation of employment by using based-methods were socially beneficial, economical as well as quality-assuring. The deputy minister gave the assurance that his ministry was collaborating with the ILO, the ministries of Finance and Economic Planning, Water Resources, Works and Housing, Roads and Highways, Food and Agriculture, Local Government and Rural Development, other ministries, departments and agencies to develop and implement the project. "We have initiated the process to constitute this NSC to provide policy direction to the project so that the nation as a whole will take advantage of the enormous job creation intervention in the construction sector," he said. He said poverty levels in sub-Saharan Africa were the highest in the world with more than 360 million people living on less than $1 a day. He said there was an increasing recognition that growth alone could not address poverty reduction and the unemployment needs of developing countries and so appropriate strategies were necessary to encourage and support equitable growth. This, he said, also placed emphasis on realising the potential of employment, particularly for the poor and the unskilled. "It follows that both private and public investment can play a major role in creating employment opportunities for reducing poverty," he added. The ILO, with funds from the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom, is embarking on the establishment of an Employment and Investment Policy Unit to strengthen the Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare to promote the labour-based concept in the provision of infrastructure in the country. Source: Daily Graphic