I was horrified when I read news reports - not too long ago - that some genius of a government minister, whose name escapes me, had stated that Ghana was going to export labour.
Surely, as a people we should aim higher than that in the search for job opportunities for young Ghanaians - and take a more creative approach to resolving the problem of youth unemployment in our country?
With the increasing influence abroad of populist leaders with anti-immigrant agendas - who are winning power in countless nations around the world - we must create opportunities for our young people right here in Ghana, instead of planning to send them overseas to be mistreated by callous and often racist employers.
E-commerce represents a huge opportunity for the younger generations in our homeland Ghana.
A creative way to help them leverage online opportunities would be to get all the telcos in Ghana to commit to helping honest and law-abiding young people who establish e-commerce start-ups - by giving them special data-packages that are truly affordable for their online businesses: as well as sponsoring workshops and mentorship programmes for such enterprising young Ghanaians in the first year they commence their online businesses.
Many young people in Ghana are unaware that they can actually buy locally produced goods to sell in their own shops on online e-commerce platforms such as Zulily, Etsy, Shopify and Noonday Collection, for example.
Surely, the telcos in Ghana can come together and collaborate with those online e-commerce platforms, to find ways of making mobile money payments sent directly to smartphones in Ghana from buyers around the world more user-friendly and seamless throughout their networks?
Ditto establish swift protocols for those e-commerce platforms to be able to block, blacklist and report fraudsters amongst those online Ghanaian shopkeepers who swindle their customers to the Ghana Police Service?
Above all, if e-commerce is to flourish in Ghana and help to create an entrepreneurial culture amongst Ghana's younger generations, the telcos need to do more to help the security agencies to apprehend and prosecute those rogues who have made Ghana a global superpower in online fraud.
They can do so by financially supporting the operations of the cybercrime units of both the Ghana Police Service and the other security agencies - as well as paying for regular cutting-edge training courses to upgrade their cybersecurity skills.
After all, the radio frequencies issued by the National Communications Authority (NCA) to telcos in Ghana, are a valuable public resource from which they make massive profits - once they recover their initial investments.
So society definitely has the right to demand that telcos in Ghana should contribute to the creation of an entrepreneurial culture amongst younger generation Ghanaians that way.
In the end, such help provided by the telcos to assist young Ghanaians to leverage the global digital economy, will enable such businesspeople to spend even more cash purchasing bigger data packages and making longer voice calls more frequently, will it not?
So it is definitely in the financial self-interest of telcos here to help young people to start online digital businesses. Ultimately it will be good for their bottomlines and make their astonishing profits grow even bigger.
Finally, as a cautionary tale to our ruling elites about the perils of sending young people in Ghana abroad to work in menial jobs, we are posting a GulfBusiness.com article about the tricks employed by some callous businesspeople in Saudi Arabia, to stop migrants they cheated from taking them to court.
Why put young Ghanaians at risk physically to face such harrowing experiences in foreign killing fields, by sending them abroad to work as "exported labourers" - because Ghana needs more foreign remittances to bolster its economy?
Please read on:
"Saudi employer dumps workers in the desert to prevent court hearing
The alleged incident saw dozens of workers dropped off 200km from their accomodation
Staff Writer
Tuesday 28 March 2017
A company in Saudi reportedly dumped a group of Indian workers in the desert to prevent them from attending a labour court hearing.
Saudi Gazette reports that the 29 men worked for a maintenance and cleaning firm in the Eastern Province that was contracted by the Education Ministry to clean schools.
They had completed their two-year contract term with a basic monthly salary of SAR400 ($106.66) and food allowance of SAR250 ($66.66) and were wanting to return home, according to the publication.
After lodging a complaint with the labour office in Al-Ahsa, where they lived and worked, the men were told that their employer had agreed to fly them home and they boarded a bus with their luggage to fly back to India.
However, instead of being dropped off at Damman’s King Fahd International Airport they were left stranded 200km away in Safaniya in an apparent attempt to stop them from attending a scheduled court hearing.
“We have been cheated time and again. First it was in India and now here in the Kingdom. They told us to pack our luggage to fly to India, so we did the packing and boarded a bus for King Fahd International Airport in Dammam. Instead of taking us to the airport, they dumped us almost in the middle of desert,” employee Aqeelan Nagarajan was quoted as saying.
He said the men could not travel back to Al-Ahsa because they did not have their residency permits to cross the checkpoints.
The men have since been living in congested accommodation without food or drinking water but are receiving assistance from the Indian Embassy and Saudi Labour Ministry, according to the publication."
End of culled GulfBusiness.com article.
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