Accra — The National Co-ordinator of the National Youth Employment Programe (NYEP), Mr. Pele Abuga has announced that next year, the programme would provide employment for 100,000 youth throughout the country. According to him, "this is part of the government's drive to provide more jobs for the Ghanaian youth", to enable them contribute to the socio-economic development of the country.

Mr. Abuga Pele, who spoke eloquently at a press conference in Accra yesterday, added that the government was trying to bridge the unemployment gap among the youth in Ghana. He revealed that by the end of this year 50,000 youth would be hooked onto the 'Youth in Agriculture' module, while 20,000 and 10,000 youth would be employed under the 'Youth in Services' and 'Eco brigade' modules respectively.

Also, the teaching assistant, dress-making and mobile phone repair (ICT) modules of the NYEP will employ 10,000; 7,000 and 5,000 youth in the country. The National Co-ordinator disclosed that in order to strengthen the programme, an exercise was ongoing to delete ghost names on the programme's payroll.

To this end, Mr. Abuga hinted that 3,000 ghost names had been identified on the NYEP's payroll. The programme spends GH¢4.4millon monthly to pay beneficiaries, while plans are underway to rope in more youth into the programme.

On exit plans for those who will be graduating from the programme after completing their two years term, Mr. Abuga intimated that plans were afoot to fix them permanently in some of the institutions they served, adding "We are engaging with the Ministry of Health to develop a module for the out-gone NYEP beneficiaries for those under the health sector, while similar ones will be developed for the security and other sectors too."

He cautioned that this would be done for beneficiaries who have good educational qualifications, especially those with passes in English Language, Mathematics and Science, or one elective subject, and those who exhibited professionalism, dedication and commitment during their work under the programme.

Mr. Abuga used the occasion to announce that the programme would introduce a proposal writing competition for the youth very soon, to enable the NYEP support those youth who have laudable projects that they want to implement.