The National Coordinator of the Nation’s Builders Corps (NaBCo), Ibrahim Anyass, has projected that a sum of GHS2.9 million will be generated from the works of 350 NaBCo trainees in an average district.
According to him, a module like Enterprise Ghana with 12,000 trainees would amount to an investment of over GHS100 million annually to private sector enterprises through the NaBCo scheme.
Mr Anyass was speaking at the passing out ceremony NABCO trainees in Accra on Wednesday, October 17, 2018.
He said the programme developed to safeguard the integrity of the new graduate employment Scheme, was opened on an online application portal and received 146,968 applications from an initial interest through sign up of 175,000 tertiary graduates.
NABCO oversubscribed
The NaBCo team, according to him, empanelled five public servants across all 254 districts who cumulatively interviewed 137,000 NaBCo applicants within a period of eight weeks.
Mr. Anyass noted that NaBCo’s seven modules: Heal Ghana, Feed Ghana, Revenue Ghana, Enterprise Ghana, Civic Ghana, and Digitise Ghana have been oversubscribed, explaining that;
“Educate had 43,834 applications; Revenue, 31,095, Civic 19,917; Digitize 16,620; Enterprise 12,949; Heal 11,785; and Feed Ghana recorded 8,934.,”.
He said in terms of regional ranking, the Ashanti recorded 34,909 applicants, Greater Accra followed with 31,809 with the Northern region with 19,807. The lowest figure was recorded in the Upper West region at 4,003.
As of Wednesday, the process had according to Dr. Anyass, received 93,382 confirmations of acceptance of selection, out of 99,811 selected applicants who started institutional placements from the very moment they were commissioned by the president.
“These statistics are real people; with personal stories of challenges and often dire narratives of their despondency as citizens eager to contribute to nation building,” he said.
NaBCo is unique from other schemes
Speaking on Citi TV’s current affairs programme – Point on View on Wednesday, Anyass, emphasised that the NaBCo program was not a duplication of other youth employment schemes like the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) as purported by sections of the public.
He described NaBCo as a product of the visionary leadership of President Nana Akufo-Addo to curb the high rate of graduate unemployment in the country.
“The essence of NaBCo is to create employment opportunities for a particular group of people to tackle specific challenges in the public sector, it is different from anything that we have had in existence in this country. The whole essence of NaBCo is to make provisions for everyone with the qualification within a certain age bracket, whenever they exit the tertiary campuses,” he said.
NaBCo kick- starts
President Nana Akufo-Addo who officially kick-started the NaBCo program at the passing out ceremony for the 100,000 NaBCo recruits recounted how the scheme was ridiculed publicly.
“This programme, predictably, was not only ridiculed in certain quarters but also met with pessimistic and cynical comments with some going to the extent of urging graduates from our nations tertiary institutions not to register for the programme. In NaBCo, we have planted the seeds of growth and future of our country,” he said.
He was optimistic that the country will benefit from the talents of the NaBCo graduates who will receive a monthly stipend of GHS 700.
Funding for NABCO not a problem
Meanwhile the Information Minister designate, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has shot down calls for a dedicated revenue channel for the Nation Builder’s Corps programme.
He said the government was investing several billions of cedis into the initiative for the 100,000 graduates engaged under the programme.
NaBCo
The NaBCo programme is a government initiative to address graduate unemployment to help reduce and solve social problems.
The focus of the initiative is to cushion public service delivery in health, education, agriculture, technology, governance, drive revenue mobilization and collection.
By Linda Naa Deide Aryeetey
