NEIP impacting the lives of Ghanaian youth – John Kumah affirms
The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program (NEIP), Lawyer John Kuma has disclosed that his outfit will in the last quarter of the year collaborate with the religious bodies to train about 200,000 people.
The Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori Atta during the Mid-Year budget review indicated the need for the NEIP to collaborate with the religious bodies amid coronavirus pandemic to encourage, train and also provide financial support to people.
In spite of that, Mr. Kunah affirmed that they are going to train about 200,000 people from the religious bodies in bid to support the sector.
The NEIP Programme was established by His Excellency Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo under the Ministry of Business Development in 2017 with a seed capital of 10 million dollars and were tasked to raise 100 million and according to the CEO, they have been able to raise about 80 million extra.
The program during the National Democratic (NDC) administration, was known as Youth Enterprise Support but was changed to NEIP after President Akufo-Addo assumed office.
Speaking on Atinka TV, Lawyer John Kumah explained that the government in the bid to assist the youth and Ghanaians to become their own bosses, introduced the NEIP to provide training and offer support to the youth in ensuring that unemployment rate reduces.
He noted further that, after commencing the program in 2017, they had 7,000 applications and proceeded to train the entire number of people and subsequently gave 1,350 financial support.
He indicated that, during the NDC’s eight years in office, the Youth Enterprise Support (YES) trained 103 individuals and gave 66 financial support.
According to him, after an online application in the second window, 12,000 people applied and were trained where 3,000 got support from the NEIP.
He said, a session of Ghanaians expressed concerns about the difficulties they go through in applying for the program and for that matter, the President, Nana Addo asked the leadership of the NEIP to train 100 individuals from the various District Assemblies.
However, in all the 260 Districts in the country, they have trained 26,000 people with 5,000 getting financial support from the government.
He said, in just three years, the NPP has been able to train over 45,000 people on the NEIP and is optimistic that they can do more to help Ghanaians.
He added that due to the good work of the NEIP in the past three years the unemployment has reduced from 15% to 7.3% and is of the view that government is on course to get rid of unemployment in the country.
Touching on education, he said, “Now that SHS is free, students must not graduate without one technical skill. We should a way to integrate skills into our education. Students must be able to have a background in technical education. It will be better if every student gets one practical skill before graduating to become whatever he or she wants”
He said, government’s effort to improve education is not enough and has implored them to make technical education key so that SHS graduates can also have something better to do even when there is no white-collar job.
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