Director of Business Support and Policy at the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programme (NEIP) under the Office of the President, says many companies in Ghana are struggling to fill the job vacancies available.

Speaking at the Youth Employment Agency’s Job Fair at the Accra Conference Center on Thursday, Franklin Owusu Karikari said the companies have a tough time finding the right people to fill available vacancies.

“Our duty as NEIP is to groom entrepreneurs and people to become job givers. As we work with them, the key challenges they face, for me, number one is not money, it is human capital. A number of companies are struggling to get the right people in place and that is why I keep saying that it is not that jobs are not in Ghana, jobs are available but boys and girls are not,” he said.

Explaining his point on Top Story, Mr Karikari said until the Youth Employment Agency’s Job Fair at the Accra Conference Center on Thursday, many unemployed people were not aware that there are about 3,000 job vacancies available in companies across the country.

These positions, he said, will hopefully be filled during the job fair, adding that this is only the beginning of YEA’s job fair programme.

The NEIP Director added that some companies, however, are small scale which started operating a few years ago, thus are unable to fulfil the salary requirement of some graduates.

“So graduates are coming in, they want to be paid GH¢2000 and above. These are companies that were started two or three years ago and because these businesses cannot also afford the services, they are also left behind not getting the right people to work with,” he stated.

Due to the job paradox created, Mr. Karikari said that government agencies are committed to working together to alleviate the situation through proactive job search for the unemployed and also entrepreneurship development.

His comment comes after many young Ghanaians massed up at the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) Job Fair in search of jobs from several employers.

The scores of Ghanaian youth formed long queues at the Accra International Conference Centre hoping to secure a job.

Mr Karikari said that NEIP and YEA were surprised to see that many people at the fair, stating that some of them travelled from other regions despite the announcement that the fair will be replicated across all 16 regions.

“I can tell you that those who came, about 40% of them already have the job but they are looking for a better offer,” he said.

Meanwhile, Research Officer with the Ghana Employers’ Association, Kingsley Laar affirmed that some companies were not finding the required human resources.

Despite the need for employees, Mr Laar said the skill set of an individual is important in the job-seeking process.

“The skill set of workers remains an important element for enterprise build and development. Employers are very much concerned about the skills,” he stated.