The Minority in Parliament has expressed concern that a freeze on public-sector employment will worsen the unemployment situation in the country.

The group has, therefore, asked the government to consider the number of youths that risk the tendency of becoming jobless as against the existing unemployment.

This follows the government’s announcement of a freeze on hiring into the public and civil service effective January 2023 as part of cabinet directives for expenditure rationalisation in the 2023 Budget.

Speaking at a Post Budget Workshop at Ho in the Volta Region, the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu said the 2023 Budget was an indication of the highly distressed state of the country.

“Mr. Speaker, Ghana’s economy and as I listened to the Honourable Minister of Finance, the 2023 budget statement is replete with evidence that government is simply broke and the economy in crisis. An economy under life support that needs some resuscitation”, he said.

The Minority Leader indicated that some of the interventions which the government is seeking to make including the capping of enrollment of nursing and teacher trainees and the reduction of the size of convoys could rather worsen the state of the economy.

Meanwhile, the Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu says external shocks and the depreciation of the cedi have been major contributing factors to the current economic hardships for which the 2023 Budget seeks to tackle.

“These (COVID-19 and Russian-Ukraine war) have created internal and external imbalances in the clearly economic woes; high inflation and unsustainable financing of the current economic deficit and rapid depreciation of the cedi. Suddenly, these variables have brought a lot of hardships to the citizenry, particularly the poor and vulnerable”, he noted.

He added that, the budget intends to alleviate the plight of Ghanaians through increased spending on social protection.