There are all sorts of strange groupings in Ghana. Sometimes, I wonder why such groups exist. Take a group like the Retired Staff Association of the Volta River Authority, for example. Who needs a group like that?
Well, I thought I had heard the worst of the weird associations in Ghana until last Monday when I read a press release from the Unemployed Graduates Association of Ghana. Now, there is very little public information on how and when this association was founded and by whom.
What is clear is that the association exists to represent the interests of unemployed graduates – young men and women with higher education but no jobs. I hear it has a membership of 3,000.
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Normally, it shouldn’t be a group one is proud to belong to but the leaders of the Unemployed Graduates Association of Ghana seem convinced that they have taken on a noble cause to fight for the ‘rights’ of the unemployed graduates. One of their key objectives it to get government to create jobs for members of the association.
I want to wish the group all the best in all its endeavours. But whiles at it, I have a few questions: what does it take to become the president of the Unemployed Graduates Association of Ghana? Five years of active membership? What happens when a new president gets a job a few months after his election? Does he step down or will he see his tenure through even though he is technically unemployed?
And about the membership of the association, my friend Rodney Nkrumah-Boateng, has a few questions of his own: “If you find a job, do you automatically lose membership? Since they are all unemployed, do you have to pay dues?”
And I still wonder, where do they hold their meetings and if you are unemployed, shouldn’t you rather be using your time scouring the job market instead of engaging in fruitless dalliances with fellow unemployed? Maybe, this association is a networking opportunity – a platform for the jobless to dish out advice on the best way to stay unemployed. I will never know. What I know, though, is that misery (including unemployment) likes company.
