1,572 youth register for jobs placement

Bawku (U/E), Sept. 20, GNA - A total of one million five hundred and seventy-two (1,572) unemployed youth in the Bawku municipality of the Upper East Region have registered for jobs placement under the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP).

Trades and other vocations received the highest number of applicants of 611, followed by agriculture, 333, community teaching, 214 and auxiliary healthcare assistants, 156.

128 applied for the community protection position, 27 for information technology, 39 for vocation jobs, 13 for paid internship and 57 for sanitation and waste management.

Mr Abdulai Tanimu, Municipal Youth Employment Co-ordinator, disclosed this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Bawku on Wednesday.

He said the assembly had procured 25 tricycles at a cost of 75 million for 25 personnel selected under the sanitation and waste management sector to be engaged on daily basis to collect garbage in the municipality.

He said another batch would be screened for daily inspection of sanitation as well as educating the populace on how to maintain hygienic environment to prevent diseases.

Mr Tanimu said another screening exercise would be conducted for teaching applicants in order to pick qualified candidates to fill the various vacancies in schools to also improve education in the area. He added that, plans were far advanced to access a seed capital and to acquire land for the smooth take-off in the agric sector, saying that, this would be the bed rock to supply local foodstuffs to schools under the NEPAD School Feeding programme.

The NYEP Coordinator debunked the assertions that the programme was a "job for the boys", adding that, those being recruited were not asked of their party ID cards or affiliations.

He said the screenings would be done in a transparent manner to ensure that qualified candidates were chosen to enhance the services to be provided to the communities.

He called on opinion leaders and stakeholders to support the government's initiative of providing jobs for the youth, which would reduce poverty, and to enhance better welfare of the people.