Government’s programme to recruit 100,000 Ghanaians under the new youth employment agency is underway across the country.
The YEA which replaces the GYEEDA now has all the legal backing to ensure sustainability and prompt payment of allowances.
The new policy is designed to ensure that service charges by providers are limited. Funding which was a major issue for GYEEDA has been addressed under the YEA.
It is expected to derive its funding from the communication service tax, the district assembly common fund and the Ghana Education Trust Fund with 65 percent of the funding expected to go into the payment of beneficiaries.
Already 25,000 have been recruited and are expected to earn 250 Ghana cedis as allowance per month whilst the remaining 50 cedis will go into a provident fund which can be assessed by the beneficiary after exiting the programme in two years. Employment and labour relations minister, Haruna Iddrisu disclosed this to Joy News.
According to him, state institutions will play key roles in the recruiting exercise’- the Forestry Commission is key in recruiting youth in afforestation, the Ghana Education Service is consulted in recruitment for community teachers, the Ghana Health Service is also key in recruiting for the youth in health assistance and already the national vocational training institute has recruited and is training six thousand youth and we are also collaborating with the prisons service in our programme to recruit five thousand youth to be trained in agriculture and for the prison service, he indicated.
The programme has also set aside an amount of 5 million Ghana cedis as youth enterprise support offer money to young entrepreneurs. To address the issue of political interference in the recruitment exercise, the programme has set up regional and district offices with persons without links to political parties to supervise the recruitment exercise.
According to Haruna Iddrisu government is committed to ensuring the Ghanaian youth benefits from the programme irrespective of political affiliation. He is hopeful the target of recruiting one hundred thousand youth will be met soon.
