The employment program in this country has become so pathetic that a lot of the Youths who have signed up to it are literally wallowing in abject poverty. They are employed but their salaries is nothing to write home about.
A gentleman whose name is going to stay anonymous for security purposes has reached out to us about how joining the Youth Employment Programme has brought him more woes that he could ever expect in his young life.
Narrating his experience to Ghbase.com, the gentleman lamented about how he had worked with the Agency for three years and he still doesn’t get paid his full salary.
The gentleman who earns 399 Ghana cedis on monthly basis explained how he has gone months without receiving his salary.
” I applied to the Youth Employment Agency after Senior High School and after my application went through, I was given an appointment letter to work with the police force. We were sent to do some training in Accra after that we were dispersed to different stations across the country. I work with the Community Protection Assistance (CPA) and as part of my responsibilities, we assist the police in making arrests among other police duties.” He narrated.
When asked about how their uniforms and boots, the gentleman sadly disclosed how they were given only two uniforms to work with.
” For the past three years, we have been working with just two uniforms. We were given some boots but unfortunately for us, it was either too big or too small and since we weren’t allowed to trade it with our mates, we were forced to buy boots worth 250 Cedis out of our 399 salary which comes once in four months. For this year, we haven’t received any salary for the past four months and It hasn’t been easy at all. We want them to tell us if they no longer require our services so that we can move on with our lives.”
The Youth Employment Agency (YEA) was established under the Youth Employment Act 2015 (Act 887) to empower young people to contribute meaningfully to the socio-economic and sustainable development of the nation. Its objective is to support the youth between the ages of 15 to 35 years through skills training and internship modules to transit from a situation of unemployment to that of employment.
The CEO of the Programme is Justin Kodua Frimpong who is also a Lawyer by profession. For some reason, he doesn’t seem to have an idea about the challenges the youth under his program are facing or he is just being ignorant.
Either way, the right thing has to be done if we want this country to move forward. Ministers who used to earn 7000 Cedis on monthly basis are complaining about how “small” their income is and they put aside their differences and called for a raise to 120,000 Cedis on monthly basis.
This clearly proves Nana Aba Anamoah’s theory that the leaders of this country are only united in insensitivity especially when it involves monies going into their already fat wallets.
We hope to get some Justice for the young and his other colleagues suffering the same fate.
