Fate of 80 market guards in balance

The fate of some 80 market guards employed under the National Youth Employment Programme attached to the AMA still hangs in balance.

The AMA says that it is not responsible for the payment of their salaries. AMA officials say the confusion about who to pay the guards stem from lack of communication between the agencies involved.

One of the aggrieved market guards told Joy News that they have not been paid for four months and neither the AMA nor youth employment is willing to pay them.

The Special Assistant to the Mayor of Accra, Ali Baba Bature told Joy News that the zonal recruitment office of the NYEP has failed to liaise with the employment ministry over the recruitment of the market guards.

“Those 80 people were recruited by the zonal coordinators of the NYEP and they are placed at the various sub-metros which we call zones…they submitted their names to us and then we trained and posted them to the markets. Now when they were at the market and their pay was delaying the assembly decided to be giving them some token allowances pending when they would be paid by the ministry of manpower... the AMA never went out to the field to recruit them,” he said.

Mr. Bature also described as false allegations that the AMA had asked the market guards to go but explained that some were leaving on their own volition.

“We are not laying out anybody. They decided to stop. We didn't recruit them so how can we lay them off. Some are working and I think we have got about 30 still working pending when things would be streamlined to get their pay,” he said.