The absence of clear criteria for the eventual selection of personnel into the Nation Builders’ Corps (NaBCo) is a major concern for a Vice President at IMANI Africa, Selorm Branttie.
Noting how various modules under the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) are run, Mr. Branttie bemoaned the fact that recruits onto such programmes are announced out of the blue.
[contextly_sidebar id=”8aMwP0sathDrwaorItjHbe6H4mIk0dNC”]“For some of us, we don’t see anything. All we realize is, a list is put out in the Daily Graphic or the dailies listing all the people from the districts. How some of these people are selected, we almost do not even know,” Mr. Branttie said on The Big Issue.
He indicated that the criteria for selection onto various modules of the corps would give some indication that the government was attempting to get the best possible recruits.
However, without the selection criteria, there could be a misapplication of resources, he added.
“All this means that we may not even know if people are suited for the things they are going be deployed into. For example, is there going to be any kind of aptitude test that is going to say that by going through this aptitude test, we know that you are computer literate… How are we even going to do a quality test of the kind of people we are trying to put in these areas or are we just trying to fill in these spaces just for filling sake? For me, these are some of the things that are very important.”
“The selection criteria is a black box. Everybody can be recruited but how do we know who is being selected and is there a public board? Is there any metric by which people are being scored? For me, that is a very big issue,” Mr. Branttie concluded on the matter.
About the Corps
The programme is expected to create 100,000 jobs in seven sectors of the economy including Health, Education, Agriculture and ICT. The beneficiaries who will receive a stipend of GHc700 will be engaged for three years.
The Nations Builders Corps will also provide all 216 districts with jobs for 462 graduates.
The programme, which will be managed by the office of the President, will focus on alleviating shortfalls in public service delivery.
NaBCo has a number of subsets which are connected to other major government targets and initiatives.
It will have a “Clean Ghana” Programme for sanitation, a “Heal Ghana” module for health, “Revenue Ghana” programme for tax collection, a “Teach Ghana” module for education and a “Feed Ghana” module for agriculture.
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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citinewsroom.com/Ghana