Review NSS Act - Ameyaw-Akumfi

Ghana’s parliament will need to revisit the law that established the National Service Scheme to fix the bottlenecks plaguing it, Professor Christopher Ameyaw-Akumfi, a former Minister of Education, has said.

His comment follows the debate that has been ignited about the relevance of the scheme, following the admission by two ministerial nominees, Otiko Afisa Djaba and Catherine Afeku, that they did not do their national service. The two risk not being approved by parliament as ministers for failing to fulfil the legal requirement.

But speaking in an interview with Moro Awudu, host of the Executive Breakfast Show on Class91.3FM, on Tuesday, 7 February, Prof Ameyaw-Akumfi said: “Even though we have a law on national service, we have instances where people who haven’t had national service have been approved in parliament. And that is the point some of them are making that if you have made exemptions then listen to whoever is being discussed, find out whether there were reasons why the service couldn’t be done and then you go ahead.”

“But having said so, if there is a law and we feel that the law is no longer relevant we know what to do. Parliament should begin to take a second look at it and bring about amendment.”

He added: “My personal feeling about national service is that it is about time we had a look at its significance. At the time when people were pushed into national service, there was the feeling that get the youth going into the field to do some emergency work, carrying cocoa around and doing all kinds of things. Now the numbers are huge, we don’t even know where to place most of them, you have a number of students who get sent into areas where there is virtually very little to do. So are we still going to go by the earlier intention of the service?

“There are serious objections about using national service people in the classroom. That is a major area to look at. I have a friend who is so passionate about this, that we are having these untrained personnel into the field to teach and some of the observations are terrible. The higher percentage of personnel get sent to the classrooms, so if teaching is defective and so you are using these people, then of course you have a problem.

“I think that if we are going to continue to make this compulsory, then we should sit down and look at the modules or areas that they can go. Most of them don’t even find any job to do when they are sent to various locations. It means that it is no longer as relevant as it used to be when it was first started.”