NaBCO: Government destroying jobs to create jobs – Whip ridicules

Government’s much-touted Nation Builders Corps (NaBCO) has been ridiculed by the opposition NDC who believe the government is indulging in what is termed ‘robbing Peter to Paul’.

Government is rather taking jobs from a different class of people to assuage the needs of another group, the First Deputy Minority Whip, Ibrahim Ahmed observed.

The seven modules under the Nation Builders Corps launched by President Akufo-Addo on Tuesday are expected to create about 100,000 jobs for the youth.

“Any move to create jobs is a good one, but this one is not creating jobs. When you take someone’s job and give to another person you have not created anything,” Ibrahim Ahmed told TV3 News@10 on Tuesday.

He claimed the government has no source of funding for the new programme and has therefore directed all the district assemblies to allocate 20 percent of their district assembly common fund to finance the NABCo.

All the 255 district assemblies have been told not to award contracts again, he asserted, citing for instance, a meeting he said was held in Kumasi about a week ago where the districts were directed on how to spend their common fund.

“40% will go into school feeding, 20% on planting for food and jobs, 20% on Nation Builders Corps and 20% on development, including administration,” he said.

Per the directive, Mr. Ahmed claimed, all contractors and artisans working at the district assembly level would lose their jobs.

“If you are creating a new programme, you don’t destroy the existing ones,” the deputy Whip told government.

He insisted that the directive to the assemblies will seriously affect persons in the informal sector especially those without formal education.

“The assemblies can’t build schools and award contracts engaging local artisans. Instead of the assemblies awarding contracts, engaging local contractors, local artisans, carpenters, masons, painters and even those who fetch water for that contract to be done are going to be deprived of their jobs, because government is not going to do construction again; that is the source of my worry.”

Although he is not calling on government to scrap the Nation Builders Corps, he challenged it to “find a new source of funding for the programme”.

In his view, the directive to district assemblies on how to use their fund “should be reversed…district assemblies must be allowed to find their local needs” and execute them.