Four thousand unemployed graduates who have been sitting at home for the past two years can now heave a sigh of relief following an arrangement to absorb them through the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) for deployment to the various metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs).
Under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed in Accra yesterday between the YEA and the Local Government Service, the graduates would be employed by the agency for the Local Government Service to deploy them to the MMDAs across the country.
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the YEA, Mr Justin Kodua Frimpong, signed on behalf of the YEA while Dr Nana Ato Arthur, the Head of the Local Government Services, initialled on behalf of the organisation.
The new arrangement is under the YEA graduate internship module.
Speaking at the event, Mr Frimpong explained that the agreement that was to engage unemployed graduates between the ages of 18 and 25 in the first phase, was designed to augment the human resource capacity of public agencies across the country.
Mr Frimpong added that the second phase of the agreement would focus on engaging the private sector to absorb more unemployed graduates in line with the government’s agenda to tackle youth unemployment.
He said the YEA had developed an exit strategy for the graduates who, after two years, would be expected to be engaged permanently by the MMDAs and other institutions.
According to the CEO, the agreement provided for 10,000 unemployed graduates to be absorbed at the moment but said 4,000 would be deployed for now with many more to benefit subsequently.
Touching on the freeze on public sector employment which was effected by the last administration and had further increased youth unemployment in the country, Mr Frimpong said the YEA could no longer wait for the ban on employment to be lifted hence the decision to initiate the move to employ the graduates.
For his part, Dr Arthur lauded the agreement and expressed the belief that it would go a long way to reduce graduate unemployment in the country.
He said the Local Government Service would, from now on, allocate 30 per cent of vacancies for the recruitment of the YEA beneficiaries with the remaining 70 per cent open to the rest of the public.
Dr Arthur noted that the unemployed graduates who had been home for the past two years, had had the exposure to be able to fill vacancies in agencies under the service.
Source: Graphic.com.gh
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