The World Bank Country Director for Ghana, Liberia, and Sierra Leone, Mr. Pierre Laporte has said that the government should have made adequate arrangements to transfer staff of the collapsed banks into other sectors to reduce unemployment that accompanied the financial sector cleanup.
According to Mr. Laporte, many youths working in financial institutions lost their jobs.
“What did the government do to prepare for the transition of those people in the financial institutions,’’ he questioned.
Mr. Laporte added that the government could have done better because that is what happens generally with public service redundancy.
He continued that the best way of dealing with unemployment is to prepare other places to engage those people in other sectors.
He said the 2017 financial sector clean-up was necessary but the government should have transitioned affected staff to other sectors to curb job losses.
In an interview with Accra based radio station, monitored by Mybrytfmonline.com, Mr. Laporte affirmed that the cleanup was necessary.
But in 2017, the Nana Addo-led government embarked on an exercise titled “financial sector clean up” to strengthen the financial sector in the country.
At the end of the exercise, the government collapsed about nine different banks, 23 different Savings and Loans companies, 386 different Microfinance companies, and 53 fund management institutions in the country.
Meanwhile, the Bank of Ghana reported that there were severe challenges with solvency, liquidity, and asset quality in Ghana’s banking industry, with some banks showing significant under-provisioning and capital shortfalls after conducting an asset quality review in 2015 and 2016.
Source: Mybrytfmonline/Solomon Nartey
