The western regional minister Paul Evans Aidoo has advised the media not to center their reportage only the oil and gas sector but must give room for other relevant sectors in the Ghanaian economy.<\/p>\n
Mr. Aidoo insisted the Western Region used to be a hub for the production of cash crops such as cocoa, rubber, oil palm plantations among others, but the discovery of oil has led to the concentration of media reportage on the oil sector.<\/p>\n
According to him, the practice was taking a toll on postings by the National Service Secretariat where students were only willing to serve every student wishes to be posted into the oil and gas field at the expense of equally important ministries such as the Ministry of Agric.<\/p>\n
\u201cImmediately we had oil, all attention has been on oil and gas. And the youth in our schools, everybody is thinking about oil and gas. Even during the postings of national service people. Everybody want to work with oil companies, the main reason why we even instituted the national service is even forgotten now. People do not want to be in the classroom, people do not want to work with ministry of Agric, people are not interested in health, and everybody wants to work with the oil and gas company meanwhile the jobs are not there\u201d. Mr. Aidoo chided.<\/p>\n
The minister bemoans the practice where media houses also advertise quack institutions which offer short-term courses in oil and gas. He asked the youth in the area who are unable find jobs in the oil and gas sector to take advantage of other Agriculture \u00a0oriented social intervention programs in the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause you see, even under the Outgrowers project that we have with Ghana Rubber Estates Limited (GREL) we have a lot of facilities there from the government. Why is it that we just staying in the city waiting for jobs from the oil companies. To build the economy of this region (western) and the nation at large, we need to go into agriculture more than concentrating on oil and gas because that place is more technical, we cannot get jobs to do unless some of us get into offices sweeping doing all those stuff, let\u2019s get back into agriculture\u201d. The minister advised.<\/p>\n
He expressed the view that traditional crops can make us as a country well to do.<\/p>\n
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