Mr. Saani Nurideem, Upper West Regional Coordinator of the NYEP, said

there was no district in the region that the Programme had been able to provide 50 per cent of its teachers' requirement.

The situation is not different from the demands for Health Extension Assistants and Community Police as well as Revenue Collectors by the district assemblies.

Mr Nurideem said this when he interacted with the media in Wa and appealed to government and the national authorities of the Programme to allow more youth to be engaged in those areas that their services were most needed.

He said 23,000 teachers were recruited nationwide under the Programme but currently the Programme was operating with 15,000 teachers with a shortfall of 8,000 and that created vacancies in many of the deprived schools.

Mr Nurideem said 420 youth had been employed under the Information and Communication Technology module of the Programme.

Mr. Ibrahim Alhassan, the Second Deputy National Coordinator in-charge of Human Resource, said the NYEP was advocating a change of name from NYEP to National Youth Development Authority.

He said it was the vision of the NYEP to develop the potentials of the youth and explained that the change of name was to enable the Programme to fulfil that dream.

Mr. Alhassan said discussions were ongoing to exit the youth engaged in the Youth-In-Security to the security agencies for permanent employment after the Programme had trained them.

Mr. Mohammed Pelpuo, Second Deputy National Coordinator responsible for Business Advisory, said the Business Advisory Module was setup to benefit the private sector.

He said the unit would always take proposals from individuals and support them with finances to train the youth after which financial assistance would be provided them to become self employed.

Youth trained under the unit would form cooperatives to qualify them for credit from the government and other financial institutions.