200 Youth Organisations Registered With Ministry

The Ministry of Youth and Sports, in collaboration with the National Youth Authority (NYA) and other stakeholders, has registered 210 youth organisations in the country through an online youth registration software. The essence of the exercise was to categorise youth groups and associations according to their core activity area for the NYA to co-ordinate their activities. The sector Minister, Mr Clement Kofi Humado, who announced this in Accra Thursday when he took his turn at the meet-the-press series, also announced that the ministry had developed youth networks categorised under the priority areas of the National Youth Policy. He said the NYA had also developed a website to improve its relations with the public and clients and on which the authority would provide a chat room for discussions on youth issues which would be used to gather the views of the youth on pending bills submitted to Parliament. Mr Humado said views collated would be submitted to committees of Parliament to which such bills were referred, adding that at the district level the ministry was partnering with the UNFPA to develop district youth forums that would also link with the sub-committees of the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs). He said that novelty, which was a collaboration among the ministry, the NYA, Parliament and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, was meant to educate and encourage the youth to make inputs into discussions on policy issues and bills that affected them and thereby fully participate in the country�s democratic process. Mr Humado indicated that the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) had so far recruited 232,910 beneficiaries, representing more than twice the recruitment level of about 108,000 at the end of 2008. He said that significant success chalked up by the programme was due largely to the innovativeness of the leadership of the programme by expanding modules and changing its policy focus from the traditional modules which had payroll implications to the self-employment modules. According to him, currently 5,000 young people were being trained in the oil and gas training module at the Management Development and Productivity Institute (MDPI) to take advantage of the opportunities envisaged in the emerging oil and gas industry. He said under the new policy direction of the NYEP, the ministry sought to move away from the over-emphasis on the traditional mode of funding the programme to seeking partnerships and grants from the donor community. In furtherance of that objective, he said the ministry had established a Business Advisory Unit under the programme to identify business opportunities for beneficiaries and link them to micro-credit schemes and markets under the World Bank. He announced that the ministry had brokered a debt rescheduling agreement with the Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) to pay off debts accrued to the programme since 2007 in respect of beneficiary allowances and management fees paid by the ADB on behalf of the programme. In accordance with that arrangement, he said the ministry had terminated the advance financing of salaries and allowances of its staff and beneficiaries and arranged monthly payment of GH�1 million to the bank until the entire debt was paid off. Mr Humado said plans were far advanced for Ghana to host the second ECOWAS Games in June 2012. The games will bring together the sporting youth in all West African countries to compete in selected disciplines, including athletics and wrestling. He said the ministry would support the development of the lesser known sporting activities under the National Sports Authority to make them more attractive and acceptable to the public.