NABCO trainees set to demonstrate over 10 months unpaid allowance

Nation Builders Corps beneficiaries have served notice of its intention to picket at the Jubilee House, to register their displeasure over unpaid allowances.

The beneficiaries, whose contract ended beginning September this year, said this had become necessary following the government’s failure to settle 10-month arrears.

The NABCO Trainees Association of Ghana in a statement expressed worry that protests it has held in the past have yielded no results.

“After exhausting all possible avenues, including the recent picketing and the time window given to the government to redeem all arrears, the same issue lingers.

“It is clear that our welfare is not of concern to the government, thus we will be staging another picketing at the Jubilee House on 20 September 2022,” parts of the release said.

About NABCo

The Nation Builders Corps (NABCO) programme is a government initiative implemented to address the growing phenomenon of graduate unemployment.

The objectives of the programme were as follows:

• Provide temporary employment to unemployed graduates
• Improve skills and employability for the transition from program to permanent employment
• Improve public service delivery
• Improve government revenue mobilization
• To provide needed infrastructure to improve access to basic public services

Under the programme, graduates were expected to be trained, equipped with the necessary work tools, and deployed around the country to engage in the following programmes:

• Educate Ghana
• Heal Ghana
• Feed Ghana
• Revenue Ghana
• Digitize Ghana
• Civic Ghana
• Enterprise Ghana

It was initially supposed to run for three years, ending in October 2021 but was extended for an additional year.

It will be recalled that during the 2022 budget statement, the government had indicated that the YouStart programme and a Digital inclusion program would gradually absorb the remaining NABCo trainees.

Finance Minister Ken Ofori Atta, who presented the budget in Parliament, explained that the programme would be cancelled and replaced with the YouStart initiative, an entrepreneurial initiative for employment.

“As they exit, the current cohort on the programme is encouraged to take advantage of the YouStart initiative and other existing programmes in our drive to build an entrepreneurial nation.

The government’s policy is to support dynamic young entrepreneurs’ in accessing training and funding to build their businesses and become a significant pool of job providers for their fellow young people,” he noted.

So far, the government has invested approximately GH¢2.2 billion into NABco.