About 11,000 tertiary graduates employed under the Nation Builders Corps (NaBCo) have exited the scheme into permanent employment.
Chief Executive Officer of NaBCo, Dr. Anyars Ibrahim, who made the disclosure said about 20,000 graduates on a waiting list of the scheme were expected to be considered to replace those who have exited.
He was addressing journalists ahead of the one year anniversary of the establishment of NaBCo, which is mandated to deal with the unemployment situation in the country, by offering some 100,000 unemployed graduates with job opportunities for a three-year period.
The scheme is currently run on seven modules; Feed Ghana, Digitise Ghana, Heal Ghana, Educate Ghana, Revenue Ghana, Enterprise Ghana and Governance Ghana, to meet the pressing needs of the nation while providing jobs for the youth.
According to Dr Anyars Ibrahim, the replacement will be done based on the request of agencies where beneficiaries had left, but “because the scheme was oversubscribed, we will consider people on our waiting list for such opportunities”.
He argued that being on the scheme did not bar beneficiaries from looking for permanent jobs elsewhere, saying “so right from deployment we believe that NaBCo employees had to justify themselves so that they can be offered permanent employment when the need arise, and our database indicates that close to 11,000 have been retained at their placement centres.”
Dr Anyars Ibrahim further justified the sustainability of the programme as it enters its full complement a year on, by providing capacity building for beneficiaries to enable them efficiently fit into the world of work.
“We have partnered with the Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence to provide a learning platform that’s feeds into the preparation for the exit of trainees into their chosen careers.
“All trainees will be required to sign unto the NaBCo Skills and Talent Academy (NSTA Pathways) which will be launched by the President on Thursday (October 17, 2019) and follow the training programme to assist them prepare for their exit from the scheme.”
The training, Dr Anyars Ibrahim explained, would border on equipping trainees with entrepreneurial and industrial skills as well as soft skills in order to explore and take advantage of wide range of opportunities existing on the job market.
“The training is all-encompassing and takes about 65 to 70 per cent of the time of trainees, the 30 per cent will be one-on-one interactions which will be for places where there is no internet.
We have created designated learning centres across all regions where we operate for trainees to access,” the CEO indicated, but fell short of clarifying whether it would impact on working hours or not.
The Director-General of the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence, Mr Kwesi Adu-Gyan, was optimistic that “the skills and training we will give them will enable the organisations to engage them full time” as part of the retention package under the scheme.
“We want to bridge the gap between academia and industry which is a major challenge on the job market and we believe this learning platform will help NaBCo achieve its aim.”