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A Deputy Information Minister, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa has downplayed suggestions that he misinformed Ghanaians when he announced the Mills administration had created 1.6 million jobs within a year. According to him, his announcement was backed by figures made available to him by heads of various government agencies that provided jobs for the unemployed. Mr. Ablakwa was responding to a claim by the Employment and Social Welfare Minister, Hon. Enoch Teye Mensah that he was unaware of the existence of the 1.6 million jobs in the first twelve months of the Mills government. �The issue of the 1.6 million jobs is history, the Ningo Prampram MP said in a calm voice, in an attempt to break a storm of probing questions flying in from the Minority in Parliament on Thursday June 23. Hon E.T. Mensah said he did not want to be drawn into what he called the 1.6m jobs �minefield�. �I don�t know about 1.6 million jobs� he said, as more pressure mounted from curious opposition voices like those of Hon Albert Kan Dapaah and Hon Mathew Opoku Prempeh. The Minister, who was in the House to answer a question on the unemployment rate in the country, told the House his Ministry has no current statistics on the unemployment situation in the country. But Mr. Ablakwa, whose credibility as a Deputy Information Minister is being questioned, has told Citi News the Minister did not contradict the figures published earlier by Government. According to him, the Hon. E.T. Mensah only wanted to avoid being ambushed by the Minority in Parliament on the issue of the 1.6 million jobs since that was not originally part of the question. �What happened in Parliament was basically an ambush and that's why the Minister said he did not want to walk into that minefield. I have spoke to the Minister and he has told me that he is not refuting the figures that Government put out earlier and that what he was saying was that he was not asked to come to Parliament to speak to the 1.6 million jobs. If he admits that they did put out 1.6 million jobs, they would have asked him what the breakdown was, and that he could not answer because those were not the question he was billed to answer. If you give him notice and ample time, he will answer properly because for all you know, the youth in Agric programme, the figures have changed, the number of people employed in the Civil Service ,may have changed as well, so you just don�t put the Minister of Employment on the spot like that� he said. Mr. Ablakwa said he will readily admit an error in the figures put out, when his sources alert him. �I will be in a hurry to concede as soon as it comes to my notice I made a mistake or if the facts prove otherwise. So far, the breakdown we gave has not been interrogated so I am not in the position to dismiss or doubt what I have been told by these senior officials who have been in the public services for all these years and decades. So I think that we should just spend some time and interrogate what has been given to me to put out and if it emerges that mistakes were made, I will be the first to admit� he noted.