Dr Rashid Pelpuo, Minister of State in Charge of Special Initiatives, has rated the government’s performance on job creation B+, saying it is “getting close to A” despite persistent concerns over unemployment.
Dr Pelpuo, who was recently reassigned by President John Dramani Mahama from the Ministry for Labour, Jobs and Employment, assessed the government’s performance during an interview on Eyewitness News on Thursday, August 27, 2026.
“I think we’ve gotten a B. Even B+. We’re getting close to A,” he said when asked to grade the government’s performance on job creation over the past one and a half years.
Dr Pelpuo defended the government’s record, arguing that job creation should not be measured solely by the number of people directly employed by the government.
He said the government had adopted a “multisectoral approach” involving various ministries, departments and the private sector to create employment opportunities.
“We have a multisectoral approach to job creation and accounting for the number of jobs that are created,” he said.
The former Labour Minister, however, acknowledged that the government was still compiling data needed to establish the exact number of jobs created since it took office.
He said some ministries and departments had submitted their figures and the data was being consolidated.
“If I give you any number now, it would be an estimate. I have written to all the ministries and departments to give me the number of jobs that have been created so far,” he said.
“We hope that by the time we finish compiling it, we’ll be able to concretely say that we have created this number of jobs.”
Dr Pelpuo was also questioned about the government’s 24-hour economy policy and the expectation that it would quickly translate into large-scale employment through three-shift operations.
He maintained that the policy was already being implemented by some private-sector companies.
According to him, he had visited about 10 private companies operating around the clock, while the government had identified more than 400 companies interested in participating in the 24-hour economy.
Source: Citi Newsroom
