o begin with, the Agency is expected to recruit over 20,000 young people under its Youth in Health Module to train and equip them as Community Health Workers.
This would be followed with subsequent recruitments in the Youth in Security, Youth in Coastal Sanitation, Youth in Agriculture and Youth in Afforestation amongst others.
The initiative, according to the Agency, is to augment the services being provided by health professionals in the various health institutions across the country, especially, those in the rural and deprived communities.
The exercise is under the umbrella of the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations and is in collaboration with the Ministry of Health (MoH), Ghana Health Service (GHS), World Vision International, Ghana, One Million Community Health Workers (ImCHW) and the Global Campaign of the UN Sustainable Development Goals Network (SDGN).
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of YEA, Ebo Beecham, told journalists at a press conference last Thursday that the initiative by his office forms part of President Mahama’s vision to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)/Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations.
That aside, the initiative is also seeking to create meaningful and sustainable jobs for the people of Ghana. The unemployment rate among Ghana’s youth currently stands at 5.2%, according to records by the Agency.
“I seek to make tackling youth unemployment an all-inclusive effort and the pivot of the Youth Employment Agency as captured in our mandate, calling on all involved – political leaders, public servants, private organizations, social partners, NGOs and most importantly you, the media – to work together towards one goal: to allow all well-meaning and motivated young Ghanaians living everywhere in Ghana to find decent, sustainable employment,” he noted.
All the modules that are expected to be carried out, according to Mr. Beecham, shall be “known broadly as Community Improvement Programs.”
The Agency, he added, would this time around, engage the services of “credible private institutions” to help it carry out the various modules it would be rolling out.
“The Agency would like to state on record that, any institution or organization indicted in the erstwhile ‘GYEEDA’ Auditor Generals’ Report will not be considered for any of our current modules until cleared and advised otherwise by our legal department and the Attorney-General’s department”, he stated.
Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Haruna Iddrisu, in his address said with the rolling out of the YEA modules “Ghana’s youth can no longer wait to be told we will be recruiting”.
