40,000 applicants register for NaBCo - Anyars Ibrahim

More than 40,000 graduates have applied for placement under the Nation Builders Corps (NaBCo), four days after the programme had been launched, Dr Anyars Ibrahim, the Lead for the programme, has said.

Dr Ibrahim, who is also a Technical Advisor at the Office of the Vice-President, told Daily Graphic,the application process was going on smoothly.

He, however, did not give a breakdown of the modules of NaBCo under which the 40,000 applicants had registered.

“There are no quotas to a particular module, and because we are not even a week into the process, we do not want to stampede the applicants for them to become worried about the number of vacancies under a particular module,’’ he said.

NaBCo

Last Tuesday, May 1, this year, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo launched the NaBCo in Kumasi as an initiative by the government to provide employment for 100,000 unemployed graduates this year.

The programme will initially operate seven modules designed to meet the pressing needs of the nation, while providing jobs for the teeming youth who have received tertiary education but are struggling to find jobs, partly because of the ban placed on public sector employment by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The beneficiaries will be engaged for three years, and they are expected to earn a monthly stipend of GH¢700 each.

Modules

The modules are Feed Ghana, Educate Ghana, Revenue Ghana, Heal Ghana, Enterprise Ghana, Digitise Ghana and Governance Ghana.

Under the Feed Ghana module, the graduates will be engaged as agricultural extension officers to help farmers, while under the Educate Ghana module, the beneficiaries will be posted to senior high schools (SHSs) to teach especially Science and Mathematics.

In the case of the Revenue Ghana module, the graduates will work with the Ghana Revenue Authority to help in the collection of revenue, while under the Heal Ghana module, nurses who have been at home for years without jobs will be engaged to work in the health sector.



In respect of the Enterprise Ghana module, graduates will be assigned to various private sector enterprises for jobs and skills training, as well as development, while in the Digitise Ghana module, graduates will be posted to the IT sector for the Digital Ghana and the transformation agenda, where they will be attached to the National Identification Authority (NIA), the Ghana Post, the Births and Deaths Registry or the Land Title Registry to work.



In the case of the Governance Ghana module, the graduates will be attached to various local authorities.

The module qualification and recruitment processes and all the essential criteria, along with detailed information, are available on the NaBCo website, www.nabco.gov.gh.

More than 100,000

On the issue of how the programme would deal with more than 100,000 applicants, Dr Ibrahim said there was a criteria process that would guide recruitment onto the scheme.



“This cannot work without following through normal recruitment procedures, such as validation, interviews and other processes, to determine whether an applicant is suitable for a module or not. So even if we get 500,000, we still have to break it down based on the criteria,’’ he said.

Dr Ibrahim also explained that after the three-year duration of the programme, there were exit arrangements that would either help the graduates to gain employment or make them employable.

“Within the three years, the graduates can be employed by the private sector partners and government agencies or use their employable skills to be on their own,’’ he said.

He said the implementation of NaBCo did not mean that the government would stop recruitment into the public service.

“Government agencies will continue to recruit; clearance will be given for recruitment, and also if there are permanent job opportunities, the graduates can leave the scheme

“There is also the element of entrepreneurship, which will make some of the graduates work on their own,’’ Dr Ibrahim added.