GUARD AGAINST SHODDY WORK (BACK PAGE, NOV 24, 2010)

YOUTH recruited under the Youth in Road Maintenance (YiRM) module of the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) have been advised not to allow themselves to be influenced by unscrupulous contractors to execute projects in shoddy ways.
The Deputy Eastern Regional Minister, Mr Baba Jamal, who made the call, stated that if they connived with unscrupulous contractors to do shoddy work, they would fail to justify the purpose for which they were employed under the scheme.
He was speaking at the end of a weekend training programme for 10 regional supervisors for the YiRM module of the NYEP at Koforidua.
The participants had undergone an intensive training in road maintenance at the Ghana Highway Authority Training Centre in Koforidua and were to supervise the youth engaged under the module to keep the roads across the country in good condition.
The deputy regional minister said the introduction of the YiRM module of the NYEP was aimed at not only creating employment for the youth but also to enable them to check poor execution of road construction projects by contractors across the country.
He indicated that the survival of every government depended on the success of youth employment programmes such as the NYEP.
He, therefore, urged the beneficiaries of the various modules to appreciate their recruitment into responsible positions to ensure the success of the programme.
Mr Jamal reminded the beneficiaries to guard against any other conduct that could cast a slur on the government, saying that “your failure to live up to expectation will give credence to the notion that you were appointed not on merit but on political lines”.
The Deputy National Co-ordinator of the NYEP, Alhaji Tapsoba Alhassan, said the recruitment of the youth under the module was not based on their political affiliation but on their merit and competence.
He appealed to the media to refrain from carrying out negative and unsubstantiated publications about the NYEP and the personnel working for the programme, saying that, “you should ensure fair reportage by cross-checking and obtaining authentic information before making them public”.