Accra, May 10, 2018//-The records of poor implementation of programmes resulting in their failures in Ghana have given oxygen to experts, economists and political analysts to cast doubt on the viability of the newly launched Nation Builders Corps (NaBCo) that seeks to create thousands of jobs for unemployed graduates in the country.
The sentiment expressed by them is apt in the sense that there is no law backing state-funded programme. It is also fraught with a lot of challenges including fiscal imbalances.
NaBCo is just gov’t attention-grabbing initiative
A leading development and energy consultant, Alhaji Haruna Rashid Ibrahim, told African Eye Report that; “when one drills down and questions the assumptions that form the basis for NaBCo, it becomes clear that NaBCo is just one more New Patriotic Party ( NPP) government attention-grabbing initiative that scratches the surface but does not solve the core problem of graduate unemployment” in the country.
He noted that the erstwhile J.A. Kufour government which was also from the NPP tradition had a litany of such programmes whose implementation resulted in ineffective problem resolution.
Alhaji Ibrahim mentioned Metro Mass, School feeding programme, National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Single spine salary, among others to support his argument.
“We all know what’s happening to the Free Senior High School (SHS) being implemented by the current government”, he added.
“For an unemployed graduate, the prospect of learning some new skills, expanding your network, and earning GHC700 a month is no-brainer. But is NaBCo sustainable?”
What happened to the promise of permanent jobs?
Is NaBCo what candidate Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo (now President of Ghana) promised the youth of this country, Alhaji Ibrahim questioned.
“What happened to the promise of jobs for all graduates who are willing and able to work? What happened to the promise of permanent jobs that pay living wages?”
NaBCo is not what was promised. This is delivery of a substandard product that does not meet the requirements and needs of Ghana’s unemployed graduates, according to him.
The other set of issues that NaBCo brings up are the fiscal implications and the lack of legal framework. Has the Akufo-Addo-led administration not learned anything from Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) ? Couldn’t NaBCo have been made a part of the existing Youth Employment Agency (YEA) programs?
For a government that touts “protecting the public purse” ad nauseam, the creation of a new secretariat exposes the hypocrisy and the lip service that has become a trade mark of the Akufo-Addo government, Alhaji Ibrahim said.
Is the GHC700 monthly salary taxable or not?
There are conflicting positions on this by the Deputy Minister of Labour and Employment and the NaBCo Coordinator. If it is taxable, it means that there will be a 12.5% deduction for Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) and a graduated tax rate for personal income tax.
So, at the end of the day, a NaBCo’s beneficiary take-home pay will be about GHC500. “Is that what candidate Nana Akufo-Addo promised graduates? There are high school dropouts in the informal sector earning more than that! “, Alhaji Ibrahim who is also the executive director of a research organization-based in Accra pointed.
“What about the discrimination against nurses, midwives, and teachers? Is it right for a qualified nurse to be paid GHC700 and her colleagues are paid twice that or more while doing the same job?
Where is the equity and fairness in this? Is NaBCo going to employ 100,000 graduates each year for three years or 100,000 graduates over the three year period? ”
“Remember Nana Akufo-Addo’s promise of Free SHS for all? Free SHS is an underfunded mandate for just the first year students that left the parents of second and third year students to fend for themselves.
Some are still scratching their heads as to what just happened? Is NABCO another unfunded mandate? Think”.
Can gov’t pay the GHC700 monthly salary regularly?
Alhaji Ibrahim and other experts are doubtful that whether the Akufo-Addo-led government can pay the promised GHC700 monthly salary regularly to the thousands of graduates on the programme.
” The jury is out on that. If the experience of graduates doing their National Service obligation is anything to go by, then NaBCo applicants have a cause to worry”, he emphasised.
“Allowances for the National Service Scheme (NSS) employees are in arrears. To make matters even murkier, the district assemblies have been directed to utilize 20% of the District Assemblies Common Fund (DACF) to pay for NaBCo beneficiaries.
You should know that the DACF is paid quarterly and is currently in arrears. What does that portend for you? Know that 34% of all internally generated funds are also to be paid back into the general funds”.
NaBCo is not sustainable
Alhaji Ibrahim stated: “NaBCo is a band-aid treatment for a patient who needs shock trauma assistance. It does not work and is not life sustaining. It is robbing Peter to pay Paul in a very bad way. It is not new and it is not innovative. It is a repackaging of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah’s Workers’ Brigade”.
Advice to beneficiaries
“For the unemployed graduate considering signing up for NaBCo, remember that this is not what you were promised. Arm yourself with information, critically examine and assess your personal circumstances and advise yourself. Remember Nana’s promises”.
Alternative Solutions to Make NaBCo Work
For NaBCo to work, the development consultant admonished the government which is implementing the programme in partnership with private sector entities to put in a legal framework to back it up.
He also advised the government not to create another secretariat for NaBCo. But it should rather make it part of YEA.
Furthermore, Alhaji Ibrahim added: “Carve out separate solutions for nurses, midwives, and teachers. Find sustainable sources of funding that is not robbing the district assemblies to pay NaBCo”.
“Work with universities to train students to be more entrepreneurial who can create jobs as opposed to those who are trained to be employees. Make entrepreneurship a required course for all disciplines’, he added.
Risks to economy
Vice President of IMANI Africa, Kofi Bentil warned that if care is not taking the NaBCo can destabilise the Ghanaian economy. It is bad for the economy, he stated on Joy FM’s Newsfile programme on last week Saturday.
Mr Bentil lamented:”My worry is whether we are going to get value for money. And my other worry is the potential negative effects of the programme. The first problem is inflation. You will destabilise your macroeconomic stability when you pump so much money behind the unproductive activity. I worry about that”.
“A year from now, we will come to analyse the successes or failure of [NaBCo]. In this country, we have had more than ten of these efforts: we’ve had GYEEDA, we’ve had NYEP becoming now YEA, we’ve had LESDEP, YESDEC, we’ve had YESP, we’ve had GEBSS, YCCES, we’ve had Youth in Agricultural Programme…none of these have anything to show. Point me one major success story”.
Why NaBCo
Ghana’s President Akufo-Addo launched NaBCo on May 1, 2018 to address rising graduate unemployment in the country.
Data from the Ghana’s Institute of Statistics, Social and Economic Research (ISSER), published in March 2017, revealed that only 10% of graduates found jobs after their first year of completing school, and that it takes up to 10 years for a large number of graduates to secure employment.
Also, the World Bank’s Landscape of Jobs in Ghana Report, published in 2016, revealed that about 48 percent of the youth in the country, who are between the ages of 15 to 24 years, do not have jobs.
Mr Akufo-Addo stated: “Today, the number of graduates being produced by tertiary institutions has outstripped the number of available job openings. I was alarmed, late last year, to learn that two hundred and fifty thousand (250,000) young persons applied to be placed in the Youth Employment Agency’s Internship Module, when the available spaces were only for five thousand (5,000) people”.
He continued: ” The Ghana Revenue Authority also advertised for various categories of staff. Some fifty nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety one (59,991) responded to the advertisement, out of which twenty thousand, one hundred and seventy seven (20,177) met the requirements, and the available vacancies were three hundred and fifty (350)”.
“It is important that we do things differently, if we were going to banish the spectre of desperation, and restore hope and dignity to our youth. Our ultimate goal, as a government, is to grow the economy rapidly so that, together with the private sector, we will absorb our teeming unemployed youth.
According to the government, the key strategy is to employ 100,000 unemployed graduates and equip them with skills through a process of value addition and training under seven modules-: Educate Ghana, Heal Ghana, Feed Ghana, Revenue Ghana, Digitize Ghana, Civic Ghana and Enterprise Ghana.
An amount of $600 million has been allocated in the 2018 budget for the NaBCo, while sustainable funding initiatives for the programme is still under discussion, the coordinator of NaBCo, Dr Ibrahim Anyass said.
The programme is being hailed by unemployed graduates, government officials, individuals and organisations as the major weapon targeted at graduate unemployement. But some hold contrary views.
By Masahudu Ankiilu Kunateh, African Eye Report
