Institutions including the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), the Ghana Education Service (GES), the Ghana Health Service (GHS), the Ghana Standards Authority (GSA), Ministries of Education, Food and Agriculture, Local Government and Rural Development, Finance, Trade and Industry, are to receive the 100,000 graduates.

The Chief Executive Officer of NaBCo, Dr Anyars Ibrahim, said in an interview yesterday, that all qualified trainees, including those still completing verification, would be engaged in November.

To be verified means to have one’s credentials, including educational background and national service obligations, authenticated.

Dr Anyars said NaBCo had profiled over 120,000 jobs, majority in the public sector with some 15,000 jobs in the private sector.

He explained that the exercise was done as far back as June 2018 and was known as ‘ Jobs Clearing’ which covered all ministries, departments and agencies and cascaded further down to all 254 metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies (MMDAs) across the country.

He said so far, the NaBCo Secretariat had placed over 67,000 trainees ahead of the November 1, start work date while the rest were expected to be offered their placements during the first week of November.

Breakdown

NaBCo’s data indicate that while 324 beneficiaries have been placed under Civic Ghana, Digitise Ghana modules have received 1,995 with Educate Ghana being the highest so far with 29,444. The rest are Enterprise Ghana -42; Feed Ghana-5,817; Heal Ghana, 6,575 and Revenue Ghana, 169

Per the regional breakdown, Greater Accra had 4,597; Eastern, 3,788; Central, 4,163; Brong Ahafo, 5,018; Ashanti, 11,208; Northern, 6,679; Upper East , 2,106; Upper West, 1,575, Volta, 2,049 and Western 3,183.

Additional placements are expected to cover an extra 11,000 for Revenue Ghana; 7,000 for Civic Ghana and 4,780 for Enterprise Ghana.

He said the rest of Enterprise, Civic, Digitise and Revenue Ghana modules would be placed within the first week of November by the MIPs.

Fraudsters

Dr Anyars urged the trainees to be wary of fraudsters.

“All selected trainees are, therefore, entreated to remain patient and expect further direction from the NABCO Team. Please avoid being exploited by unscrupulous persons who deceptively offer services as middlemen for NaBCo.

“The organisation has not sanctioned any payment of any amount to any individual or groups of persons for any services rendered to our applicants. Applicants, who disregard this precaution, do so at their own risk”.

Training

By its character, the NaBCo as a Graduate Employment Scheme, is a working and learning programme. Its ultimate target is to enhance the employability of trainees through a value addition process of skills acquisition and work readiness training.

Therefore, besides the allowances to be paid to trainees, government is investing an amount of 70 million every year into their training.

In that regard, Dr Anyars said NaBCo had signed partnerships with a domestic and a foreign university; along with the Council for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (COTVET) to validate the content and standard of training to lead to an award of an Exit Certification to all prospective NaBCo fellows.

On concerns about the financial sustainability of the scheme, he said considering its scale and numbers, the government had been consistent with assurances as “this has been well thought through with lessons learned from previous and existing government employment schemes. “

The Minister of Finance, Mr Ken Ofori-Atta, hinted the establishment of NaBCo during the delivery of the 2018 budget statement as a flagship programme to deal with graduate unemployment.

Subsequently, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo launched it in Kumasi on May 1, 2018.

The scheme was eventually launched at a public ceremony on October 17, 2018 at the Black Star Square in Accra with a huge crowd of trainees in attendance.