‘NYC will pursue more ICT-oriented programmes’

THE acting Co-ordinator of the National Youth Council (NYC), Dr Sekou Nkrumah, has assured the youth that the council will pursue more Information, Communication and Technology (ICT)-oriented vocational and technical training at the various youth centres to meet the manpower needs of the country.
He said the kind of training being provided at the youth centres was not enough to meet the ICT needs of the country.
Dr Nkrumah gave assurance at the British Council last Saturday at a budget conference as part of the National Youth Budget Project organised by the Youth Empowerment for Africa (YEA). The youth budget project is partly being sponsored by the GTZ Good Financial Governance Programme.
The one-day conference was on the theme, “Only an informed youth will create the political climate to make changes in policy”.
The conference which brought together a number of youth associations and individuals in the capital was under the chairmanship of Dr William Ahadzie of the Department of Sociology of the University of Ghana, Legon.
Dr Nkrumah said government was in the process of expanding the vocational and technical schools in the country to enable the unemployed youth to have a better education.
He again mentioned that “the nature of facilities at the training centres across the country make teaching and learning very difficult and need to be upgraded to provide the state-of–the-art training for the youth”.
“Government is also embarking on total mobilisation of the youth across the country in order to put them to effective productive work for economic development of the country.
Mr King Kojo Sarfo of the YEA, who presented a paper on, “Youth Involvement in Budget Work”, said the YEA had attracted maximum attention and amassed strength to engage the youth in promoting advocacy towards accessibility of budget information and advancing civic participation in the budgetary process.
Mr Sarfo stressed that the National Youth Budget Project (NYBP) intended to equip the majority of the youth with the knowledge and skills required to engage in public policy dialogue and decision making on national budget at the national level.
He told the Daily Graphic that the aim of the conference was to build the capacity of the youth in order for them to contribute meaningfully toward national policies and other documents of interest to the youth.
Mr Sarfo explained that the project would focus on “promoting youth involvement in budget work and advocating civic participation in tracking and evaluation of the national budget”.
Adding “the youth of the country must begin to take particular interest in issues concerning the budget and how to hold governments accountable in that regard”.
According to him, the NYBP is an initiative which embodies various budget activities aimed at promoting youth development and contributing to the construction of essential pillars of democracy.
The project, which was initially designed for three years, would provide platform for all stakeholders of youth development and the blueprint for adequate resource allocation in developing and implementing youth programme and policies.
The NYBP will not be of benefit to only the youth, but also to a large section of the population, who according to the 2000 Housing Census, form about 33 per cent of the total population of the country.
Though education will be the main focus of the project, it also seeks to initiate policies geared toward poverty eradication and youth development.
Mr Kwaku Lartey of GTZ gave a presentation on the overview of the 2009 budget, while the Head, Budget Development Unit, Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning, Ms Eva Mends, exposed the youth to the numerous opportunities in budgeting process.