NYEP Employees To Get Allowance Arrears (Back Page)

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah (March 26, 2008)
ALL arrears due employees under the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) will be paid within the next two weeks.
In addition, the government is also making arrangements with some financial institutions to begin paying allowances of the employees on monthly basis to prevent the problem of delays in payment.
The youth, who are currently being prepared to be absorbed into the mainstream labour market, are not in permanent employment and as such earn allowances.
This came up in an interview with the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mr Kwadwo Baah-Wiredu, when he briefed the Daily Graphic on issues that came up during his encounter with a section of his constituents in Asante Akyem North in the Ashanti Region.
Mr Baah-Wiredu hinted that there were plans to increase the less than six per cent Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund) support to 10 per cent to enable the programme to employ more teachers under the Community Education/Teaching Module.
Since the launch of the programme in October, 2006, to provide jobs for many unemployed Ghanaian youth, there have been challenges concerning the prompt payment of allowances to the beneficiaries.
Instead of monthly payments, the staff of the NYEP receive their allowances quarterly, a situation they have appealed against and called for its rectification.
At his turn at the Meet-the-Press series on September 18, 2007, the Minister of Manpower, Youth and Employment, Nana Akomea, said employment statistics indicated that about 26 per cent of the population of Ghana made up of mostly youth were either unemployed or underemployed.
He said the programme sought to provide a combination of self-employment opportunities, wage earnings and voluntary service activities to the youth.
Currently, modules being implemented under the NYEP are the Youth in Agriculture, Community Protection, Waste and Sanitation Management, Community Education/Teaching, Paid Internship, Health Extension and Vacation Jobs.
So far, out of the about 334,000 applicants on the NYEP, only 108,000 have been enrolled.
The total wage bill for the employed now stands at about GH¢6.4 million a month.
The NYEP draws its funds from the GETFund, the HIPC Fund and the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF).
Touching on how to sustain the programme, Mr Baah-Wiredu said the government was interested in seeing it succeed to benefit more unemployed youth, adding that if the Communications Service Tax Bill (talk tax) became a law, additional revenue would be generated to support it.
He said efforts would be made to employ the more than 200,000 people who had registered under the scheme but had not as yet been employed.
Mr Baah-Wiredu cautioned Ghanaians against falsehood and sensationalism as the nation entered into political campaigning and advised especially media practitioners to desist from reports which had the potential of creating tension.