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YOUTH EMPLOYMENT
AGENCY ACT
A cover for corruption?
Parliament passed the Youth Employment
Agency Act on Tuesday, the 10th February
2015. The law seeks to, among other things,
secure funding for the Youth Employment
Agency. The sources are:
a. 80% of Communications Service Tax;
b. 10% of monies accruing to the District
Assembly Common Fund;
c. 5% of moneys accruing to Ghana Education
Trust Fund;
d. Grants, donations, gifts and other
voluntary contributions, and
e. Monies approved by Parliament;
With the 2015 budget estimates, the first
three sources alone will give to the Youth
Employment Agency GH¢435 million. Thus, the
Agency will get bigger allocation than many
major ministries, departments and agencies
including the Ministry of Food & Agriculture
(GH¢412m), Ministry of Transport (GH¢362m),
Ministry of Local Government & Rural
Development (GH¢291m), Judicial Service (GH¢200m),
Ministry of Lands & Natural Resources (GH¢276m),
Parliament of Ghana (GH¢185m), Ministry of
Trade & Industry (GH¢184m), Ministry of
Foreign Affairs & Regional Integration (GH¢271m),
National Development Planning Commission (GH¢6m),
etc.
The issues:
1. The Youth Employment Agency is a new name
for what used to be NYEP and later, GYEEDA.
2. In itself, it is not a bad idea to have a
law that sets aside funds to finance youth
employment initiatives.
3. However, unless the rot that
characterized the management of this youth
employment initiative is genuinely
confronted, all wrong doers punished, and
the needed lessons learnt, the huge
resources that are being set aside for the
initiative will go waste.
4. The questions are:
i. How much of the looted and
misappropriated funds have been retrieved?
ii. The outstanding unrecovered monies are
with which people?
iii. What has happened to the prosecutions
we were told were intended to punish those
who were culpable in the various scandals?
Unless these questions are properly
answered, the Youth Employment Agency will
be seen as a cover for the rot and
corruption that were uncovered in the GYEEDA
Scandals and an avenue to perpetuate same
going forward.
By Kwaku Kwarteng
16th February 2015 |
