NYEP BOSS MEETS WITH COORDINATORS IN NORTHERN REGION

The National Coordinator of the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) has hinted that all Regional and District Coordinators of the NYEP will soon be allocated vehicles to enhance their monitoring and supervisory roles.

According to Abuga Pele, the NYEP has added fourteen new models to the existing ones which required that Coordinators would have expanded outreach programmes hence the need to support them with moveable logistics to ensure proper management.

Mr. Pele said this during his first encounter with Regional and all 20 District Coordinators of the NYEP over the weekend in Tamale, as part of his official tour of the region to brief them on plans put in place by the NYEP.

He unveiled the strategic plan for 2010/2012 which targets at recruiting 237,900 new recruits including disabled persons whose contribution towards national development could not be underrated.

He also mentioned that President John Evans Atta Mills attaches so much importance on the youth of Ghana for which reason more resources will be allocated to create jobs for them.

The NYEP National Coordinator announced that all dismissed employees of the NYEP had been paid their outstanding allowances and that the current recruits will have their outstanding arrears paid by September next month.

According to Mr. Abuga Pele, an exit plan would soon be introduced to serve as a working document that will spell out the terms of references of recruitment and replacement in every two years.

He cited inadequate funding for NYEP programmes as one of the major drawbacks and that his administration will soon establish a revenue generation unit to generate enough funds for the betterment of the programme.

“Funding is the major problem of NYEP and because of that there is no regular or predictable source of funding for our programmes for which reason we are seeking a legislative instrument to ensure that source of funding will be drawn from the Ministry of Youth and Sports,” he emphasized.

The salary structure is not the best because of that we are thinking of integrating salaries of all the Regional and District Coordinators and Staff into the national pay vouchers at the Secretariat, he added.

Mr. Pele mentioned the Macro Small Loans Centre (MASLOC) as one of the organizations the NYEP seeks to work in partnership with to multiply its source of funding for the newly introduced programmes.

Ibrahim Mohammed Murtala, National Coordinator in charge of Research and Communications slammed the erstwhile Kufuor led government for abusing the talk-tax system.

He asserted that monies accrued from the talk-tax system was diverted from its intended purpose and that led to delays in settling the accumulated arrears of the exited recruits.