NYEP recruits 648 youth for 2007 farming season

The National Youth Employment Program (NYEP) has recruited six hundred and forty eight (648) unemployed youth, consisting of six hundred and twenty three (623) male and twenty five female under the Agric-business Module in the West Gonja district (Damongo) for the 2007 farming season.

According to the District Employment Coordinator, Mr. Charles Ewuntomah out of the total of three hundred and twelve acres (312), one hundred and forty four (144) was destroyed by flood while one hundred and sixty eight (168) were unaffected.

He said the program received sixty (60) bags of seeds, five hundred (500) bags of fertilizer and two hundred and fifty (250) bags of Sulphate Ammonium as input.

Touching on the Health Extension Workers Module, he said a total of seventy (70) youth were recruited and have since been posted to their various health facilities, across the district.

Sister Fabiana a Reverend Sister at the Damongo District Hospital and one of the facilitators remarked that, “The Health Extension workers were doing well and needed to be recommended. They have helped us to improve upon heath delivery in the district.”

Ten (10) unemployed youth according to the coordinator were also engaged under the Samasama Module and are now working under the District Environmental Health Directorate.

The coordinator also said forty one (41) unemployed youth were recruited for the waste and sanitation module and were taking care of the sanitation situation in the district. “They have really improved upon sanitation in the district; our gutters are now clean and do not smell anymore,” he remarked.

About the Community Teaching Assistance Module, he said one hundred and sixty five (165) unemployed youth were recruited for it and had been relocated throughout the district.

In an interview with the Deputy Director of Human Resources of the District Education Office, Mr. Ignatius M. Der, he said, “there is a healthy relationship between the Ghana Education Service and the National Youth Employment Program in the district.”

He said his outfit had also collaborated with the supervision and monitoring of the beneficiaries, in the district.

He also noted that his outfit had asked all headteachers to support them as to how to prepare their lesson notes and teaching plans; give them on the job training, monitoring their performance; punctuality, attendance and also to invite them to in-service training programs.

“We even invited some of them to programs like Breakthrough to Literacy (BTL) and some of them are working very hard,” he remarked. “Some of them are even headteachers and this shows how deprived our schools are district and in fact, their presence has helped to filled our classrooms” he emphasized.

Mr. Der therefore appealed for the program to organize an orientation course for them, so as to make them more effective and also the authorities should do well to pay their allowances promptly and regularly so as to motivate them to work harder, because their acceptance to go to the very deprived areas in the district was a sacrifice enough on their part so the program should also play its part.

“We will also appeal to the program to help us to engage more since some of our classrooms are still vacant,” he added.