The Ghana Employers’ Association broke ground for the construction of its new three-storey office complex building on a half an acre of land located in the North Ridge of Accra.
The ultra-modern office complex valued at GHc 12,875,250.15 comprise of state-of-the-art conference facility for members and non-members of the Association , a minimum of 43 offices, board room, canteen and due to be completed in two years four months.
The plan of the complex has been designed to economically optimize the value of the land and enable the Association maximize and adopt various strategies to promote a smooth private sector growth.
Mr Terence Darko, President of GEA said the road to the acquisition of the land started in 2010 when the leadership of the Association decided that the it was old enough and needed to garner the resources to acquire a plot of land to develop for its office.
He said upon completion of the office, the image and credibility of the Association would be enhanced, help in advocacy programmes and also facilitate the work of the Secretariat.
The President of the Association noted that employers continue to face a myriad of challenges including counterfeit and sub-standard goods dumped unto the Ghanaian market, high cost of electricity, making it difficult to grow the business and drive job creation.
Mr Darko urged government to improve the macro-economic environment to ease the cost of doing business in the country.
Mr Ignatius Baffour Awuah, the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations lauded the Association’s for their economic contributions towards job creation.
Mr Awuah said the ever growing rate of unemployment in the country was a concern for government adding that there was the need to collaborate with the private sector to bridge the gap of unemployment.
“Every year at the basic level, we have some dropping out and similar situation with transitions from the secondary level to the tertiary level with about 40,000 to 70,000 unemployed”, he added.
He said that before last year the history has been that any time government sat to negotiate even for the minimum wage, deliberations took so long and sometimes entered deep into the following year before they are able to announce.
“Somewhere in July we were able to come up with figures for 2018 and this year we want to do that perhaps by the end of April”, he said.
He said government was seriously working on subsidizing electricity cost to aid industrial development urging the Association to expect a change in the coming year.