By Nicholas Osei-Wusu
The Chief of Staff at the presidency, Mrs. Akosua Fremah Osei-Opare, has launched a new module of skills acquisition and employment creation code-named ‘Garment and Apparels Module’ under the Youth Employment Agency (YEA).
Under this initiative, about two thousand unemployed youth are to be trained in tailoring and dressmaking and will be paid a monthly stipend of ¢500 each for one year to constitute the first phase of the Module.
Mrs. Osei-Opare emphasised that the government is still committed to skills training and job creation towards economic empowerment of the youth in Ghana and urged both individual and group entrepreneurs to take advantage of the various initiatives to start or expand their businesses.
The Youth Employment Agency, which started as the National Youth Employment Authority in 2006, has the mandate to create job opportunities for the youth for the socio-economic empowerment of the beneficiaries, among other things.
Towards this end, the Agency has, over the years, introduced various employment modules that not only employ the youth, even though they are temporary, but also equip the beneficiaries with employable skills to be on their own upon completion of their duration of employment.
The ‘Garment and Apparels Module’ is yet another initiative developed and introduced by the YEA to expand its scope of skills and vocational training for out-of-school youth.
The first phase of the module, which is to last for one year, will see the placement of about two thousand such Ghanaians under apprenticeship in the garment and textile industry.
The beneficiary apprentices will receive a 500 Ghana Cedi monthly stipend from the YEA to at least reduce their transportation costs during the period of their training.
Similarly, 500 small-scale tailoring and dress-making master craftsmen will be responsible for the training of five apprentices each and are being paid upfront sums of ¢10,000 each, while 15 large-scale garment and textile operators who are to receive, train, and retain 10 apprentices each have also started receiving payments ranging from ¢100,000 to ¢200,000 each as compensation for their one year services under the Module.
The Chief Executive Officer of the YEA, Mr. Kofi Agyapong, disclosed that his outfit has exceeded its one year target of creating 71,000 new jobs by more than 18 percent by the end of May this year, with plans in place to create about 31 thousand more by the end of this year.
Mr. Agyapong also announced the various jobs created by the YEA within the last year under various modules such as Prison Assistants, Youth in Health Assistants and Community Protection Assistants while the Agency has assisted about 11 thousand youth to secure employment.
The Minister for Employment and Labour Relations, Ignatius Baffuor Awuah, announced plans by the YEA to introduce a new module likely to be in the beauty and barbering industry very soon.
The Minister disclosed again that government has selected the garment and textile industries as one of two sectors being considered under a productivity eco-system project being implemented through a collaboration among the government, International Labour Organization and the Swiss Government. Mr. Baffuor Awuah appealed to Ghanaians to patronise made-in-Ghana apparel to promote the local garment and textile industries.
The Chief of Staff at the Presidency, Mrs. Akosua Fremah Osei-Opare, assured that government is committed to employment opportunities through various social and economic interventions such as YouStart, competency-based skills training in and outside of schools.
The ‘Garment and Apparels’ module of the YEA is yet another opportunity for many more in the informal sector to acquire employable skills to earn decent incomes.
The Chief of Staff advised individuals and groups to take advantage of the various interventions to get either trained or funds to start their businesses or expand existing struggling businesses.
Mrs. Osei-Opare, while pleading with the beneficiary master craftsmen to provide quality skills training to their respective apprentices placed under their care, warned the apprentices to equally consider their training as their lifelong economic opportunity, for which they must attach every seriousness to it.
She indicated that a monitoring mechanism has been put in place to closely monitor them during the period of their apprenticeship with the view to making positive meaning of the huge investment being made by government.
