NABCo Trainees Receive One Out Of 10 Months’ Arrears After Months Of Agitations

• The government has paid beneficiaries of the Nation Builders Corps (NABCo) programme one out of 10 months' stipend arrears
• The trainees have been agitating for many months for their stipends to be paid but government failed many times to honour its promise to pay them
• The NABCo Trainess Association of Ghana has commended the government for the gesture even if the amount paid was meagre

Government has paid trainees of the Nation Builders Corps (NABCo) one out of 10 months’ salary arrears following months of agitation by the trainees.

President of the NABCo Trainees Association of Ghana (NABTAG), Dennis Opoku Katakyie, confirmed in a statement that stipends for November 2021 have been duly paid.

“In actuality, nine months, counting from December 2021 through to August 2022, are still outstanding,” he said in the statement.

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The statement by the NABTAG president thanked the government on behalf of the thousands of trainees, noting that the payment would lessen the hardship. NABCo beneficiaries are supposed to receive GH¢700 every month as allowance.

The trainees urged the Ministry of Finance to “affix trainees’ outstanding arrears into its subsequent allocations to enable the Secretariat to effect payment for the remaining months.”

“If after a considerable period of time, arrears for the remaining months are not fully paid, the leadership will recruit another Draconian measure to forcibly ensure that we are paid. We have done it before, so we can do it again,” the statement stressed.

NABCo was an initiative of the Nana Akufo-Addo government to train thousands of university graduates in different skills while paying them allowances every month.

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Finance Minister Announces End To Employment Initiative On September 2022

Meanwhile, the Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta, in July announced that the Nation Builders Corp programme would come to an end on September 1, 2022,.

YEN.com.gh reported in that story that while delivering the 2022 midyear budget review on Monday, July 25, 2022, the minister disclosed that the youth employment initiative has engaged 100,000 young graduates and prepared many of them for the world of work.

“So far we have invested approximately GH¢2.2 billion. As they exit, the current cohort on the programme are encouraged to take advantage of the YouStart initiative and other existing programmes in our drive to Build an Entrepreneurial Nation,” the minister told Parliament.

The programme has been fraught with a myriad of problems, key among them the government's ability to pay the monthly stipends of beneficiaries.

Source: YEN.com.gh