It followed the efforts the govern­ment was making in implementing the National Green Jobs Strategy which aimed at promoting the cre­ation of decent green jobs through inter sectoral linkages and coopera­tion.

The strategy focused on enhanc­ing coordination of interventions that impact on green jobs across the sectors, promoting green skills devel­opment, support green enterprises to grow and expand, facilitating the mo­bilisation and accessibility to green financial resources.

The Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffour Awuah, who said these in a speech read on his behalf, was of the view that “when these interrelated compo­nents are well implemented, an en­abling environment would be created for the green and circular economy to blossom and its impact effectively harnessed for job creation.”

He was speaking at the 2022 Green Job Fair on the theme, “Green and Circular Economy: A Sure Way of Creating Decent and Sustainable Employment and Jobs.”

It is aimed at connecting po­tential employers with job seekers in the Ashanti Region.

About 1000 job seekers, mostly the youth, filled the Prempeh Assembly Hall to get connected with potential employers, on Tuesday.

The fair was under the auspices of the SNV Netherlands De­velopment Organisation as part of its European Union funded Boosting Green Employment and Enterprise Opportunities in Ghana (GrEEn) project.

According to the minister, the job fair approach had proved useful and practical in terms of linking job seekers, particularly the youth to available job vacan­cies “with records showing that over 10,000 job seekers had been employed directly through the job fairs.”

He noted that under the SNV Ghana Opportunities for Youth Employment training programme which provided employable skills to unemployed youth as well as coaching and mentoring support to entrepreneurs and starters, about 30,000 youth had been trained in various skills and 5,000 been placed in internships and job vacancies under the GrEEn project.

The Minister mentioned that since 2017, data from the various ministries, agencies and departments across the 16 regions indicated that govern­ment created five million direct and indirect jobs.

In the Ashanti Region alone, he said, 27,291 jobs were created “and we are working at constructing 54 factories under the one-district-one-factory initiative with 27 of such com­pleted as at October this year.”

Project Manager of the GrEEn project, Laouali Sadda, assured “we will be providing business development support to entrepre­neurs and inspiring more youth to kick start their green businesses.”

In 2021, he said, their project had directly benefited 6.4 million people across 24 countries in Afri­ca, Asia and Latin America by pro­moting systems change, working with and strengthening institutions and kick starting markets.

Mr Kofi Nyarko Asiedu, Ashan­ti and Bono Regions chairman of the Association of Ghana Indus­tries, observed that investing in green activities was the way to go “because the global climate is deteriorating at a faster rate and we need deliberate actions to rescue it.”

“We should recycle, use biode­gradable materials to prevent various forms of pollution and act in the best way to save the planet for our­selves and the generations behind.”

In a speech read on his behalf, Ashanti Regional Minister, Simon Osei Mensah, noted that the green and circular economy was the surest way for the country to protect the environment and to create sustain­able jobs for the youth.