General News of 2013-03-13

GYEEDA youth threaten demo against corrupt coordinators

Some employees of the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) in Accra have called on government to deal with officials whose names have been mentioned in recent media reports of being the brains behind alleged corrupt practices at the agency.

They have consequently threatened to embark on a nationwide demonstration to drum home their demands for action.

GYEEDA has been under the spotlight of media reportage of alleged corruption involving some national and regional coordinators who are said to have stashed monies meant for the programme into their personal accounts.

According to the employees, they were expecting to see government take action against all those coordinators whose names have been mentioned and do a house cleaning exercise.

They told Graphic Online that some of them do not get allowances for many months with the excuse that the government had not released money, yet some national and regional coordinators were able to amass millions of Ghana cedis from GYEEDA coffers into their private accounts.

A former Executive Director of the GYEEDA, Mr Abuga Pele, in a recent interview on Accra based radio station, Joy FM said he called the attention of the former Minister of Youth and Sports, Mr Clement Kofi Humado, to suspected acts of corruption by some management personnel hoping that there would be some investigations but nothing happened.

A former Deputy National Coordinator of the programme, Alhaji Tapsoba, was last year (2012) asked to step aside following his alleged involvement in some corrupt deals.

According to the employees they felt taken for granted for far too long and that from now on they were not going to tolerate any further delay in the release of their allowances because it was now clear to them that the reasons assigned for the delay were false.

They claim to be holding consultations with their colleagues in the other regions on their planned demonstration.

The GYEEDA which has so far engaged more than 400,000 youth under its various modules was established in October 2006 with the view to deal with youth unemployment in the country.

Among the modules that have engaged a chunk of the youth are Youth in Agriculture, Youth in Road Maintenance, Health Extension Workers, Community Teaching Assistants, Community Protection Unit, Trades and Vocation and Internship.