NATIONAL SERVICE IS THE CRADLE FOR NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT AND SERVICE PERSONNEL AS WELL
The National service scheme (NSS) was instituted in Ghana in 1973 and has since brought about so much development in various sectors of the economy, before completion a graduate is expected to choose three (3) regions which he/she wants to be posted to by the service secretariat. This only serves as a recommendation but not mandatory that the personnel be posted to one of these regions. Therefore one can be posted to any of the ten regions regardless of the regions chosen and the personnel place of residence but more often the secretariat considers the personnel’s first choice of region. Usually a higher percentage of personnel are posted to the educational sector every year to serve as temporal intervention for lack of teachers in most regions.
Essence of national service to personnel The national service gives opportunities to the personnel to gather skills and experience that must be relevant to their course of life, some of these skills and experiences acquired during the period of service include; a sense of responsibility, the ability to put up the needs of others before ones needs, the exposure and confidence in fields that might not necessarily be ones field and so on. These sum up to make a very good work experience which could prove to be valuable in the job market. What must government do to motivate these service personnel to put up their best for mother-Ghana?
1. Better allowances and timely disbursement of these allowances to the service personnel;
It is important that monetary issues that might cause displeasure in a work force or negatively affect the effectiveness and work output must be dealt with promptly. Currently the national service personnel are receiving a monthly allowance of about GH¢243.00. This amount which i believe is paid based on the current living standard of Ghanaians. Based on the kind of economic hardships that Ghanaians are currently experiencing, it will be prudent for the government of Ghana to increase the service allowances to meet with the current living standard of Ghanaians. Transport fares are currently increasing at an increasing rate in Ghana. In Tamale for instance the cost of movement using taxi from one area to another is about GH¢1.00, and service personnel are supposed to be transporting themselves to and from their homes to the institutions they offer their services to daily, some have to even bore a car from their homes to town before they can even get a car to the institutions they offer their service to, what this means is that service personnel in Tamale on the average spend about GH¢3.00 daily and Gh¢100.00 in a month on transportation alone.
2. FEEDING,another basic need of every service personnel apart from transportation is food. Most parents immediately grant their wards freedom and independence as soon as they complete their three year or four year course of study at the tertiary level. They do not consider it to be their responsibility anymore of how these graduates are fed, what it means is that these frustrated graduates have to depend largely on the popular monthly national service allowance for their daily bread. And so if a service personnel decides to spend GH¢2.00 each per meal what it means is that such a person will have to be budgeting about GH¢6.00 a day which will cost him or her about GH¢180.00 every month. In all the cost of meeting these two basic needs of a national service personnel considering this analysis is about GH¢280.00. Meanwhile these are not the only basic needs of national service personnel, other needs such as accommodation, utility bills among others must be considered when deciding on the monthly allowances for national service personnel.
Looking at the current living standard of Ghanaian, it is necessary for government to increase the monthly allowances for national service personnel drastically to enable them put up their best for mother Ghana. We are ready to leave our homes and areas of comfort to places that we are not familiar with as graduates to serve mother Ghana, but it must be noted that if the government of Ghana really wants to eradicate poverty and unemployment, then it must pay much attention to the national service personnel. Long live Ghana, long live national service personnel.
Article by A. A. Gerald University for Development Studies. Tell 0200546172,0246741670. ayiger2020@yahoo.com
