Former President, John Mahama, has rejected claims by the Finance Minister that the public sector payroll is full.

The Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta, speaking at a Springboard-Ghana Cares Youth Dialogue in Accra last month, urged the youth to venture into entrepreneurship.

He said that about 60% of the government’s revenue was already being paid as salaries to some 650,000 public sector workers.

But John Mahama does not agree with this assertion.

The 2020 Presidential Candidate of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) insists that there are 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,” John Mahama said on Wednesday while delivering a public lecture to climax his ‘Thank You’ tour.

“The Ghana Education Service and the Ghana Health Service have human resource gaps of almost 100,000 (98,650 actual) and more than 70,000 (76,795 actual) respectively. Similar gaps were also identified in the security services: Ghana Police Service - 35,020, Ghana National Fire Service - 30,136, Ghana Immigration Service - 3,522, and Ghana Prison Service - 7,925,” Mr Mahama claimed.

He said that the government was rather lacking innovative strategies for financing the human resource gaps.

“The time has come for the government to bite the bullet and take the bull by the horn. Many of these sectors can be made self-financing to improve the capacity to employ, once they are allowed to use portions of their Internally Generated Funds instead of depending solely on the consolidated fund,” he intimated.

John Mahama also accused the Akufo-Addo-led government of failing to take practical steps to curb unemployment in the country.

He described the current unemployment issues as 'a national security crisis'.

He suggested to the government to adopt some of the strategies proposed by the NDC in its 2020 manifesto to deal with youth unemployment.  

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

“The NDC’s one million (Edwumapa) Jobs Creation Plan, the free TVET, and National Apprenticeship Programme as contained in our manifesto are still relevant and available for this government to draw on for implementation. If well implemented, we can create an average of 250,000 jobs every year for the youth of Ghana,” he mentioned.