16 April 2015, GhanaWeb

Statistics from the National Labour Department (NLD) indicate that 96 out the 200 licensed private employment agencies (PEA) in the country were in good standing at the end of the first quarter of this year.

Fourteen of the licensed agencies are into foreign recruitment and the remainder of 186 are all involved in local recruitment.

In 2014, a total of 4,702 job applicants secured employment through these agencies, of which 3,560 were males and 1,142 females.

Out of this, 494 of the applicants were placed in foreign employment, specifically in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. The sectors under which they were placed were mainly transport and communication, construction and security services.

Again, a total of 6,033 applicants gained employment through the agencies in 2013. A breakdown shows that 5,637 were local placements and 396 foreign.

The Head of the Employment and Statistics Unit of the NLD, Mr Anthony Awotwe, who disclosed this to the GRAPHIC BUSINESS in Accra, said the local job placements were in all sectors of the economy.

Challenges with private recruitment in Ghana

Occasionally, there are media reports of recruitment scams by some unscrupulous PEAs. Even the Ghana Police Service has recently been affected by such scams.

There have also been reports of Ghanaian migrant workers who are allegedly stranded outside, although they embark on such sojourns through the facilitation of some PEAs.

The common complaints of such migrant workers are the non-payment of wages for months and the harsh living conditions that they say they suffer.

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