Registration Of 2014/2015 National Service Begins

The National Service Scheme (NSS) has begun the registration of the 2014/2015 service personnel across the country. About 71,189 graduates are expected to do their national service in the 2014/2015 service year. Every year, graduates from the universities, polytechnics and other tertiary institutions are posted to various sectors to undertake a year�s mandatory service for the country. The educational, health and private sectors are the major beneficiaries of the 2014/2015 scheme, receiving 52, 12 and 16 per cent respectively of the total number of service personnel. The Director of Public Relations of the NSS, Mr Ambrose Entsiwah Jnr, told the Daily Graphic that the registration was going on at the various regional secretariats of the scheme and other centres that had been set up for the exercise. �To make it easier, some regions have set up two or more registration centres to reduce the pressure on officials and make it easier for the personnel,� he said. Although the closing date for registration had not been given, Mr Entsiwah said prospective service personnel did not have to rush to the various centres to register because the exercise would continue for a long while. He said NSS personnel from the polytechnics would be given up to September to finish their examinations and start their registration in October this year, owing to the four-month strike embarked upon by their teachers. Rumours He debunked rumours that the scheme had posted some people to mortuaries and non-existing insitutions. A message purported to be from the National Service Secretariat and which had been circulated on various social media networks, particularly on WhatsApp, generated anxiety among NSS personnel. �The NSS does not issue statements on WhatsApp and so whatever is there is not coming from us,� Mr Entsiwah stated. He urged the media and service personnel to seek information from the right sources. Fraudsters In their desperation to change their places of posting, Mr Entsiwah said, most service persons fell prey to fraudsters who pretended to be middlemen for the NSS but ended up defrauding the prospective service persons. He, therefore, advised prospective service persons to not turn to middlemen to help change their places of posting. �Postings are not for sale and changes of postings are not for sale either,� he cautioned. Instead, he encouraged prospective service persons who wanted to change their postings to go through the right process by writing petitions to the NSS to justify the need for change. Mr Entsiwah further advised them to accept the postings, irrespective of the places they had been posted to, and see them as calls to duty to serve the nation.