The 2020 Presidential Candidate of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has criticised the government for failing to address youth unemployment in the country.

Delivering a public lecture to climax his ‘Thank You’ tour on Wednesday, John Mahama said that it was “heartbreaking and deeply disturbing” for many young people to seek employment with national security agencies.

“Another problem that requires immediate resolution is the explosion in unemployment. The spectre of tens of thousands of frustrated and desperate young men and women, running and falling over themselves to apply for very limited positions in security agencies, as we have recently seen, is most heartbreaking and deeply disturbing. Unemployment has truly become a national security crisis,” the former President said.

Earlier this year, various national security agencies received clearance to recruit more personnel to boost their manpower.

The recruitment processes, however, were characterized by some chaotic scenes.

An instance was the gridlock at the National Fire Academy and Training School as thousands of applicants to the Ghana Fire Service thronged to complete their medical and verification process.

John Mahama believes that some of these situations could be avoided if the government had put in place the right measures to reduce unemployment.

He accused the government of "bandying about of dubious employment creation figures."

“This has been coupled with ad-hoc and unsustainable measures that have led to the throwing back onto the street of tens of thousands of NABCO recruits with virtually no hope of finding sustainable employment,” he said.

“Unemployment continues to plague our country and it is clear this government has no sustainable plan to address it. The botched NABCO experiment has proven not to be the pathway and the means to an end. We need to come together and face youth unemployment head-on,” he added.

The former President said that the NDC, in its 2020 manifesto, proposed a more sustainable approach to addressing unemployment.

According to him, the plan, if implemented, had the potential of creating an average of 250,000 jobs annually.

Meanwhile, John Mahama has also rejected claims by the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta that the public sector payroll was full.

John Mahama insisted that there were human resource gaps to fill in the public sector.

“I disagree with the oft-repeated position that the public sector is full and has no room for more people. The Human Resource Gap (HR Gap) study we conducted on the public sector last year, revealed gaping shortages in specific segments of the public sector,” he said.