Foundation for Generational Thinkers (FOGET) has called on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to impress upon management of National Entrepreneurship and Innovative Plan (NEIP) to periodically publish names of beneficiaries and their expenses to enhance probity, accountability and transparency.
According to the President of FOGET, Mr. Prosper Afetsi, “this will save the nation from losing millions of state funds from ending in individuals’ pockets.”
The periodic checks, he said, would further serve as a viable weapon to fight corruption associated with the implementation of various national youth employment programmes which were created under the previous governments.
Mr. Afetsi was of the opinion that the beneficiaries of the new NEIP introduced by President Akufo-Addo to promote growth and development of entrepreneurship and to accelerate job creation for national development should not be for the functionaries, but rather it must be national in character.
The initiative, Today gathered, was a multi-pronged approach aimed at creating conducive and business-friendly environment to stimulate enterprise activities, and provide integrated national support for start-ups and small businesses.
The programme, Today understands, is government’s primary vehicle for start-ups and small businesses.
The programmme is supposed to give emerging businesses space to grow, receive financing and business development services, secure markets during the critical formative years and to tap into a wide supply chain and network during their growth years.
But, speaking in an interview with Today yesterday in Accra, Mr. Afetsi expressed worry that several of such programmes had been initiated by successive governments, yet there were no evidence to show for their benefits to the nation.
He cited projects such as YES, GYEEDA, NYEP, LESDEP which the previous government claimed to have empowered the youth one way or the other but failed to achieve the purpose for which they were established.
“How many youth got the opportunity of being employed under these national programmes and where are the evidence? ” he asked, saying that huge sums of tax payers’ money was sunk into the establishment of these national programmes yet, the youth unemployment in the country keeps rising.
“It is sometime very strange to read from the media that government has created thousands of direct and indirect jobs for the teeming unemployed youth,” he noted.
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