Minister of Employment, Labour Relations and Pensions, Mr Ignatius Bafour- Awuah, last Friday presented 12 more Toyota Hilux pickup vehicles to Public Employment Centres (PEC) across the country.
He also presented a 32-seater Toyota Coaster minibus to the Welfare Union to facilitate staff movement during durbars, workshops and conferences.
This brings to 16 the number of vehicles presented to PECs by the government to help facilitate their smooth operation in all the 16 regions.
The first four pick-ups had already been sent to the centres in Atebubu in the Bono East Region, Odumase in the Bono Region, Twifo Hemang Lower Denkyira in the Central Region and Konongo in the Ashanti Region.
The remaining 12 are for the centres in the Volta, Oti, Northern, North East, Upper East and West regions, Savannah, Ahafo, Western, Western North, Eastern and the Greater Accra regions.
The PECs formed part of the Ghana Jobs and Skills Project to boost job opportunities and improve skills training across the country and hosts the Ghana Labour Market Information System (GLMIS), which will contribute to developing critical skills for national economic transformation, minimising skill mismatches and reducing unemployment.
Mr Bafour-Awuah handing over the vehicles, said they were expected to help facilitate the movement of their staff in their respect regions, as part of efforts to reach out to the broader communities.
The centres he explained, are where people looking for jobs would go and provide their information, and in the same way, employers seeking potential employees, could also go and log on the information platform to recruit the people they needed.
“The centres are designed like market places, where both employers and employees, would meet and exchange ideas which calls for a lot of engagements, hence the presentation of the vehicles to enable the officers get to the remotest part of the communities, adding that, a web-based portal,www.glmis.gov. gh,has also been established for people to access information on available jobs.
Mr Baffour- Awuah said this was not the only intervention of government, it had also made available some 86 motorbikes to the Labour Department to be distributed to their offices around the country, to facilitate their movement.
Mr Dawuda Ibrahim Braimah, the Chief Labour Officer of the Department of Labour, on behalf of the centres assured of a strict maintenance culture and that the vehicles would be used for their intended purposes.
According to him the department and the ministry already had a dedicated transport unit and a special team to take inventory of the movement and maintenance of the vehicles, as such everything possible would be done to ensure the lifespan of the vehicles.
BY LAWRENCE VOMAFA-AKPALU