Govt is determined to deal with unemployment - Veep

Bolgatanga, May 21, GNA - Vice President Aliu Mahama at the weekend reaffirmed the government's determination to deal firmly with unemployment in the country.

He said the Graduate Internship and Attachment Programme, a module of the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP), was a bold step towards addressing youth unemployment.

Vice President Mahama was speaking at the launch of the NYEP in the Upper East Region at Bolgatanga.

He said graduate unemployment was not only an affront to the country's socio-economic development but also a ready tool in the hands of persons who used it against the government as a means of fomenting social tension and scoring political points.

The Vice President said the Graduate Internship Programme was meant to provide on-the-job training and experience through attachment to various establishments and make young graduates qualify early to obtain regular jobs.

Vice President Mahama said the NYEP had also impacted significantly on education as more than 23,000 community teaching assistants had been recruited and deployed in rural schools throughout the country. He said the NYEP had so far created jobs for over 92,000 youth nationwide

Youth in agro-business, trades and vocations, community policing, environment and sanitation and ICT are some of the modules being implemented under the programme.

Vice President Mahama said the regional launch of the NYEP in Bolgatanga was important because with the opportunities provided by the programme, the youth in the area would stay at home rather than migrate to the urban centres in search of work. He urged chiefs and landowners to release land to the youth to enable them to undertake gainful production and salvage the region from poverty and unemployment. Some 229 newly trained Community Policing Guards drawn from the Tamale Metropolis, Salaga and Kassena-Nankana districts also passed out. 21 May 07