A draft bill that will seek to transform the National Service Scheme (NSS) into an authority has been completed and submitted to cabinet for approval, the Executive Director of the Scheme, Mr Osei Asibey Antwi has said.
The bill when it becomes a law will change the status of the scheme and give it the powers to execute other things beyond its current mandate.
"As part of the way forward, we have worked on all the necessary documents that will enable us transition into an authority because without becoming an authority there are a lot of things that we cannot do.
"For example, obtaining the status of an authority will also offer us the necessary regulatory framework to venture into areas other than its existing mandating. It will enable the Scheme enter into joint ventureship with other companies and engage in commercial activities that will help us internally generate funds (IGF)," he explained.
Mr Antwi disclosed this when his outfit took its turn on the maiden State of the Agencies Report, a platform created by Ministry of Information in collaboration with the State Interest and Governance Accountability (SIGA) to enable State Owned Enterprises to tell their story in Accra yesterday.
He said all the necessary consultations had been undertaken and the draft bill had been submitted to the President through its parent ministry, the Ministry of Education.
Mr Antwi said it was important for the operations of the scheme to be looked at again after almost 50years in operation and supporting the development of the country.
"The Ghana National Service Scheme (GNSS) was first established by NRCD 208 (1973) and in 1980, the National Service Act 426 was promulgated and passed by the Parliament to give constitutional backing to the Scheme," he stated.
He explained that part of their mandate was to deploy a pool of skilled manpower drawn primarily from tertiary institutions to support the development of both the public and private sectors of the economy.
This, he said was to promote the values of national cohesion and voluntarism in personnel and to instill a sense of civic duty and discipline as well as providing them with an early opportunity to participate in nation building and development.
Mr Antwi explained that over the years, the scheme had been acting as a "conveyor belt" by simply offloading graduates to User Agencies without much effort to equip them with the requisite skills to make them more employable.
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As a result, he said this created a gap between the graduate youth and the world of work and to address the situation, a number of initiatives had been undertaken including the "The Deployment for Employment" initiative.
He explained that "Deployment for Employment" Initiative was an intentional approach by the scheme, to provide competency-based skills training through partnerships with the private sector as one of the drivers in shaping and equipping the graduate youth for the job market.
"This approach is intended to fill the "missing middle" where most graduates fall off because they do not have the right competencies and skills needed for the job market either as employees or self-employed," he emphasised.
Under the initiative, he noted that the following modules had been developed to provide pathways to employment for Service Personnel who may be interested.
The modules he said included; NSS/Teaching Programme, NSS Youth in Housing and Construction, NSS/MSME Accounting Aid Programme, NSS/MOTAC Support Programme, NSS/Data & Research Project, NSS/ Youth in Agriculture and NSS/ IT Solutions Programme.
He said the approach was intended to fill the "missing middle" where most graduates fall off because they do not have the right competencies and skills needed for the job market, either as employees or self-employed.
