About 110,000 youth who were employed under the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) under President John Kufuor were all laid off by the Mills-Mahama administration shortly after it took office in 2009, Mr Boakye Agyarko, Policy Advisor to the main opposition New Patriotic Party’s flag bearer, has said.
Addressing journalists at a press conference on Monday, 19 September, Mr Agyarko said the NPP’s National Youth Employment Programme, which became Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) under President Mills, employed 110,000 young people by the time the NPP left office on January 7, 2009. “In under two years, with the right policies in place, a positive change was made,” he said.
“Now compare that to what the NDC has done in youth employment. Immediately the NDC took office, they created a horde of unemployed youth by laying off all these 110,000 young people previously employed.
“In these eight years, the NDC has been unable to recruit even 100,000 youth, with their performance hovering around 70,000. What the NPP achieved in under two years, the NDC has been unable to achieve in eight years.
“It is not surprising that their greatest achievement in this sector has been the creation of ingenious schemes to facilitate the stealing of over one billion Ghana cedis from the sector and the sharing of this loot amongst themselves and their cronies.”
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