Work diligently to ensure that the NYEP register is cleaned - Pele
Tamale, June 30, GNA – Mr. Abuga Pele, National Coordinator of the National Youth Employment Programme on Monday asked regional, municipal, metropolitan and district coordinators of NYEP to work diligently with sincerity to ensure that the register was cleaned to pave way for more recruitment.
He said, “A preliminary investigation in one office in Tamale alone revealed that out of 70 Youth Employment Personnel sent there to work, only 12 were at post but their salaries kept coming” and advised the coordinators to instil nationalism in them and ensure that the right thing was done.
Mr. Pele was addressing coordinators of the programme in Northern Region in Tamale on Monday, as part of a tour to some regions, to explain the essence of the head count exercise and the chit system recently introduced, to ensure that all “Ghosts” names were removed from the register.
Mr. Pele is paying a five-day working visit to the Northern, Upper East and Brong Ahafo Regions to monitor the head count exercise currently underway in the country, and to see how the “Chit system” was done and to advice the coordinators on matters concerning the programme.
He estimated that at the end of the head count exercise, those who would be captured in the register would not exceed 50 thousand and expressed the hope that by the end of this week the exercise would be over.
He assured the coordinators that no one would be sacked from the programme but explained that coordinators who would be found to be incompetent would be replaced, and that action should not be interpreted as sacking saying, “We want to make the programme more formidable and we need serious and knowledgeable persons to work with.”
Mr. Pele said the register was full of errors and that if the chit system was working well, it would be easy to know the actual people who were working and those who had abandoned their posts.
“We are all sitting on a mountain of problems and if we don't adopt strategies to solve them together, the programme would not yield the needed result and our youth would continue to remain unemployed,” he said.
He said some of the problems facing the programme was that it was not backed by any legislation, no proper funding, while the mode of payments to personnel always varied month after month, hence the need for proper head count.
Mr. Pele earlier paid an unannounced visit to the Tamale Central NYEP office where only one personnel was at post as at 0930 hours.
He expressed disappointment about the workers attitude and called for a change to improve the programme.
His visit to the office was to sympathize with Mr. Yussif Abdul-Karim, the Tamale Central Coordinator who was allegedly beaten by some youth and coincidently he (Mr Abdul-Karim) was the only one in the office when the National Coordinator got there.