65% of service charges to go to YEA beneficiaries

Employment Minister Haruna Iddrisu has confirmed that government has begun a policy that will ensure 65 percent of service charges will be paid to Youth Employment Module’s beneficiary allowance.

He explained that the levies are accrued from the Communication Service tax, District Assembly Common Fund and the GETFUND.

“Like in the past, you could have a situation where a service provider got GHC500 from government in respect of a beneficiary but ended up, on the basis of its cost, bank borrowing to return less than GHC100 to the beneficiary.

"Now 65 percent of the dedicated amount of Youth Employment Agency funds accruing from Communication Service tax, District Assembly Common Fund and the GETFUND will be dedicated to payment of beneficiary allowances on a dedicated payroll policy system,” he said.

By the new policy and arrangement, Mr. Iddrisu further stated that each beneficiary is expected to earn GHC250 as allowance, with GHC50 going into the provident fund when the beneficiary is exiting.

“This is the policy and directive we have received from higher authority.”

According to him, in respect of collaboration for instance, if service providers want to roll-out youth in afforestation they should do it with the Forestry Commission; if you want to roll-out Community teaching assistants, you should do it with the Ghana Education Service and Ministry of Education.

“So you will see in the coming weeks, months and years that a certain amount of the youth employment accrued fund will go to support public institutions that are dedicated to building skills like the National Vocational Training Institute, those into masonry, carpentry, National Youth Authority; our young people if they are trained and supported can earn a living, and we expect to do that module.”

He also disclosed that the Youth Employment module recruitment is still ongoing and has exceeded over 25,000 recruitments of young people; and with health assistants alone recruiting over 25,000 people, and NVTI training some 10,000 persons.

The Youth Employment Authority (YEA) has said it has put in place a strategy to roll-out 12,000 jobs per month for the rest of the year 2016, to meet their target of creating 100,000 jobs this year.

According to the Authority, the structures of the new modules to be rolled-out have been tailored to build the capacity of youth who will be engaged

Reports indicate that government has since 2013 created close to 600,000 jobs.