Ghana Revenue Authority gets 10,000 NABCO personnel for tax collection

The Ghana Revenue Authority(GRA) has secured the services of 10,000 personnel from the Nation Builders’ Corps (NABCO) program as part of measures to expand the tax net, MyNewsGh.com has learnt.

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, launched the Nation Builders’ Corps (NABCO), which is expected to employ 100,000 young graduates to assist in the public sector service delivery needs of Ghana.

Speaking on the deployment of Nation Builder’s Corps, Finance Minister Ken Ofori-Atta told Parliament that “as part of our strategy to enhance revenue mobilisation, GRA has been assigned ten thousand officers from the NABCO who will be deployed to support the implementation of these measures and strategies.”

“In particular, they will be helpful in identifying and registering potential taxpayers, collection of property rates, and follow up on debtors. The young men and women of NABCO will in the process become a pool of officers from whom the government could recruit substantive officers to support revenue mobilisation.” he added.

NABCO’s central focus is to create employment avenues and opportunities for young graduates from accredited tertiary institutions and enhance the dignity and self-esteem of the country’s graduates, as well as present them with added benefits of efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of some essential public services, as announced by government.

Explaining the objective of establishing NABCO, President Akufo-Addo said the story of youth unemployment had been a scar on the nation’s history, which was further aggravated in recent times by the moratorium placed on public sector employment by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

President Akufo-Addo said in view of this predicament and mishap,the 2018 budget statement provided an indication of a new employment scheme which would tackle the issue of the growing number of unemployed graduates in the country.

He expressed the hope that by the time NABCO trainees exited the scheme, the requisite work readiness skills and experience, often deemed a barrier to their employment as fresh graduates, would have been resolved.

He said NACOB’s focused was to offer employable skills to these graduates, adding “This is a modest, but important beginning towards the restoration of their dignity.”