NYEP to absorb 30,000 into formal employment

Daily Graphic (spread), Tues, Jan. 12/10

Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho & Matilda Attram
THE National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) is implementing an exit plan to absorb more than 30,000 youths who are currently on the programme into formal employment.
The exit plan is to make room for a new set of youths to be employed under the programme, while the old set will be absorbed by their current employers or made to enter into a trading or vocational skills training to be introduced by the programme.
The National Co-ordinator of the NYEP, Mr Abuga Pele, who made this known at a press briefing in Accra yesterday, said a bill, the National Youth Employment Bill, would be laid before Parliament this year to help facilitate the activities of the programme.
The NYEP was introduced in the country by the former government in 2007 as a stop-gap measure to create employment for the youth and it is being financed with funds from the GETFund, the National Health Insurance Scheme, the Road Fund, the Communication Talk Time Tax and the District Assemblies Common Fund.
Mr Pele said under the exit plan, institutions such as the Ministry of Health, the Ghana Police Service and the Ministry of Education would provide top-up training programmes for personnel under their outfits so that they could be formally absorbed into the various professions.
Also, the NYEP would liaise with private security agencies so that personnel who were under the Community Police Programme but were not enlisted into the Police Service would be employed to ensure that they did not become a threat to society, he said.
According to him, personnel who had not been employed formally would be encouraged to enter into trading and vocational skills training that would help them to be self-employed.
He said although the exit plan was yet to be implemented, all personnel who had been under the programme for the past two years were expected to end their tenure last December.
On the issue of arrears owed personnel of the NYEP, Mr Pele said arrears for October 2009 would to be paid this week, while those of November and December 2009 would be paid by the end of January this year.
He, however, cautioned that those who had already exited from the programme but were still drawing salaries from it should desist from that act, since any such person found out would be dealt with according to law.
He stated that the NYEP did not have any hand in the removal of some personnel from their stations and called on regional and district co-ordinators to reinstate such personnel till they were recalled.
Mr Pele called on the public to stop reading partisan politics into the programme, saying “that will not augur well for the whole country”.