DCE's Attend Workshop On Youth Employment

Alhaji Abubakar Saddique Boniface, Minister for Manpower Development, Youth and Employment yesterday asked Metropolitan, Municipal and District Chief Executives to mainstream the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) in their activities to ensure bright future for the youth.

He noted that failure of the programme would affect the unemployed youth to likely resort to social vices to the detriment of society.

Alhaji Boniface made the call when addressing the opening session of a day's sensitisation workshop on NYEP for DCE's and District Employment Co-ordinators from the Volta and Eastern regions at Hohoe in the Volta Region.

He called for co-operation and collaboration between DCE's and the Co-ordinators to achieve objectives of the programme to reduce poverty and wealth creation.

Alhaji Boniface said core target areas in the programme included agri-business, environmental protection, community policing and protection, training of auxiliary nursing and teaching staff as well as provision of water and sanitation facilities.

On agri-business, he said the assemblies would assist with the ploughing, harvesting and marketing of farm produce while the Ministry set up structures to market the produce during bumper harvest to mop up excess foodstuffs against the lean season to guarantee food security.

Alhaji Boniface said his Ministry and Ministry of Education, Science and Sports would collaborate towards the supply of foodstuffs for the National School Feeding Programme and the Capitation grant to create employment. He announced that 13,900 pupil teachers had been trained to augment the 17,516 vacancies created in the classroom and would begin teaching next academic year.

Alhaji Boniface denied allegations that the programme document was politically motivated and explained that political party identification cards were not pre-requisite on the job market. He pointed out that with the increase in unemployment rate globally, there was the need to institute a strategy that would mitigate the problem among the youth.

Mr Leo Kabah, National Co-ordinator of NYEP said about 170,000 jobs would be created within a year from August, this year, when the programme was implemented. He said unreliable weather, rain, unavailability of land and funding constituted challenges to the programme but gave the assurance that prudent strategies would be employed to surmount these difficulties.

Mr Joseph Kwaku Nayan, Deputy Volta Regional Minister appealed to the youth to take full advantage of the scheme when implemented.