The Ghana Employers Association has submitted an Industrial Attachment Policy proposal to government as part of moves to help bridge the skills gap between academia and industry.

Businesses have always expressed concerns about the lack of graduates with the right skills-set for many job descriptions, especially, in the industrial sector.

This is sometimes blamed for the increasing unemployment rate in the country.

But speaking with Joy Business, Director of Research and Projects of the association, Charles Asante-Benpong said government must lead the campaign to reverse this trend by adopting their industrial attachment policy.

Mr. Asante-Benpong indicated that the GEA has conducted a survey which shows that students are not opting for those programmes in the applied sciences as well as the technical areas.

“There are certain skills which are not available especially, in the technical areas. For this reason we want to see an engagement with industry, government and the training institutions to ensure that we address all the issues in the skills development in the country” he stated.

He emphasized the need for government to adopt the policy which he says could drive the enhancement of the industrial attachment scheme. This he said would ensure that students are given the opportunity to be attached to industry to learn from them, as part of measures to resolving the skills issue.

The Industrial Attachment Policy he stressed has been presented to the Ministry of Education for consideration “and we are looking forward to a favourable response to bring some finality to this issue.”