The University of Ghana's Pro Vice-Chancellor for Students and Academic Affairs Professor Gordon Awandare has argued that it is improper for businesses to "import" foreigners to work for them. According to him, some industry players, import labor because they believe Ghanaian graduates lack employable skills His remarks follow arguments that suggest that Ghanaian universities are unable to train and produce employable graduates hence import labor.

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"People get into this argument that the universities are not training the students right and that industry cannot employ them. You know this is one of the often repeated reasons we hear for high unemployment, but we really think that this is something we need to work on together."

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"There is no need to import labor into the country when we have brilliant, young people here who can be trained. So we just have to partner with each other, industry and academia to make sure that we are training the students to suit the needs of industry."

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However, Professor Awandare believes that this could be resolved when universities and employers partner "to train students to suit the needs of industries". According to him, building a sustainable economy is hinged on producing things on our own and reducing the importation of almost everything. He believes this would impact the economy negatively if left unchecked.

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"how do you think that bringing 1000 people from another country which some of the industry often do because they do not want the time to spend to  train people."

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"But I think if you want to build a sustainable economy, we cannot keep importing everything including labor. We should be able to produce some of these things here and in producing our own labor force it is crucial in sustaining our own labor economy" he added"

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Speaking to TV3 on the sideline of the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the University of Ghana and Nestle Ghana, Professor Awandare said, "the University will continue to build more industry partnerships to give practical training to students."

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“The University of Ghana wants to train students for the 21st century and tailor the needs of graduates to meet the demands of the job market," TV3 quoted Mr. Awandare to have said.

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Source: The Independent Ghana

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