NYEP denies any crisis meeting

News page 32

Story: Lucy Adoma Yeboah
OFFICIALS of the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP), have denied any crisis meeting which was slated for yesterday between its officials and the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) over the payment of allowances to NYEP beneficiaries.
Reacting to a story in a national daily with the headline “N.Y.E.P Cash Crisis Meeting” published yesterday, Wednesday July 2, 2008, the Deputy National Co-ordinator of NYEP, Mr Seibik Bugri said there was no crisis at the moment to warrant any meeting.
According to him the last time the two institutions held a meeting on the issue of payment of allowances was about three weeks ago.
He said it was unfortunate for such a story to appear now that efforts had been made to quicken the process of paying the beneficiaries through the bank.
Mr Bugri said the issue of delay in payment of the allowances to the beneficiaries had been with the programme since its inception adding that the arrangement with the ADB was a way to ensure early payment of allowances.
He explained that there were problems because funds for payment which came from the District Assembly Common Fund, the National Health Insurance Levy, the Ghana Education Trust Fund, Value Added Tax, and HIPC Fund, were released quarterly making it difficult to pay them on a monthly basis.
The deputy co-ordinator said now that ADB was going to help, the bank would pay the beneficiaries regularly to be reimbursed when the funds from the sources were received.
He expressed the hope that with the introduction of the Communication Service Tax (Talk Tax), where not less than 20 percent of the proceeds would be used to support NYEP, difficulty in payment of allowances was likely to minimise.
He pointed out that more than 120 youth were still waiting to be engaged under the programme and appealed to all Ghanaians to support it since it would help minimise unemployment.
Mr Bugri took the opportunity to appeal to the public to desist from calling people working under the NYEP names but rather appreciate that they were offering good services to the people which they should be recognised and acknowledged for.