The National Youth Authority (NYA) has issued a strong warning to guarantors of beneficiaries under the National Apprenticeship Program (NAP), stating they will be liable to refund all government allowances received if apprentices drop out without valid reasons.
Osman Abdulai Ayariga, Chief Executive Officer of the NYA, made the announcement during a public engagement, making it clear that guarantors will bear the financial consequences if apprentices leave the program for reasons within their control.
“So far as the government is taking the burden off you, the guarantor or the parent who is supposed to pay for the apprenticeship program for the students, the government is seeking that you as a guarantor, once your ward drops out for reasons beyond his or her control, i.e for health grounds or the person just wants to drop out because the person feels that he or she wants to drop out, the guarantor will be held responsible to pay back the money that the government has invested in the apprentice,” Ayariga emphasized.
He added that only guarantors with identifiable sources of income, such as government workers, assembly members, or traditional leaders, will be accepted, to ensure accountability.
“For guarantors, we will be looking at well-known people, maybe chiefs, assembly members, people who work in the government areas, people we can track their salaries or people who we can't trace to pay back whatever monies that government would have invested in the wards who have eloped,” he noted.
Speaking at the Young People's Forum, Ayariga also addressed concerns about potential political interference. He assured the public that the NAP is structured to serve all Ghanaians, regardless of political affiliation.
The program, aimed at unemployed youth aged 15–35, has attracted 70,000 applications, with 10,000 participants set to be enrolled this year. Ayariga emphasized that the selection process will prioritize inclusion, with women and persons with disabilities also being considered.
In a bid to encourage private sector participation, Ayariga disclosed that companies willing to train apprentices for free could qualify for tax holidays under a public-private partnership model.
“We are looking at a private-public partnership. We are hoping that private people will decide to train the apprentices for free. And once they are training them for free, then we will have to talk to the Ministry of Finance to give them some tax holidays,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Kofi Asare, Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, urged the government to avoid partisan influences in the program’s implementation. He warned against repeating past mistakes where political interference undermined similar initiatives.
“One of the reasons why past NAP has failed was that they were politicised. Many of them were implemented by party actors who were responsible for selecting beneficiaries. If we repeat that, we won't make any headway. So, we want to see a NAP that is built on implementation structures that are non-partisan.
"Let's make use of the district assembly structures and the NYA and other agencies' structures. Let's not create makeshift structures and then populate them with party actors who will add political colour to it. It is important that we target 500,000 jobs in the next four years and be as apolitical as possible because unemployment has no political colours,” Asare stressed.
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