He said although national service was mandatory and eligible Ghanaian final-year students were encouraged to accept postings to any part of the country, to render their service, it was important for them to consider their postings as a positive call to national duty and not punishment.

Mr Ohene-Gyan was addressing eligible final-year students for pre-service on-campus orientation at the University of Ghana, Legon.

Such orientation programmes were organised with the objectives to prepare and position prospective national service personnel towards their deployment to various parts of the country to serve as a way of demonstrating their voluntarism and nationalism and giving to their motherland towards national development.  

Negative notion

He, therefore, urged the students to discard all the negative notions about national service and rather look at the positives that would inure to the benefit of the country as they got ready to contribute their quota towards the building of a better future for the country. 

“I know that some of you may have some doubts about your placements or postings for your national service, but it is important to first develop an open and positive mind towards accepting your postings to where your services are needed in the interest of mother Ghana,” he said.

The Acting Director of Corporate Affairs of the Scheme, Ambrose Entsiwah Jnr, who took the students through the orientation process underscored the importance of the prospective service persons to avoid social media platforms that were used by some unscrupulous and faceless individuals to lure unsuspecting prospective national service persons to pay various amounts of money for what they termed “special postings”.

He emphasised that national service postings were not for sale and that the only authorised payment to be made by eligible final-year students was the GH¢40.00 pre-registration fee for a prospective service person to access their PIN Code online.

Mr Entsiwah Jnr advised the students to go into their national service with the enthusiasm to serve their country and be proud to do so without any hindrances or distractions.

Earlier in a welcome address, the Director of Academic Affairs of the University of Ghana, Lydia Anowa Nyako-Danquah, urged the students to consider their national service obligation to the state as their contributions towards building a better Ghana.  

Prepare

She encouraged the students to prepare their minds and accept postings to areas that might even be new to them since such areas might even become opportunities for them in diverse ways.

National service, she said, had over the years become an avenue for many young people to unearth their skills and talents and eventually secure jobs for themselves.

She, therefore, advised the students to take the orientation seriously and seek answers to all issues that were unclear and bothering them.

Mr Entsiwah Jnr responded to all the questions that were asked by the students and cleared their doubts on several other issues that bothered them.