The National Youth Authority (NYA) has cautioned guarantors of National Apprenticeship Program (NAP) beneficiaries that they will be liable to repay all allowances received if an apprentice drops out without a valid reason.
According to NYA CEO, Osman Abdulai Ayariga, guarantors will be held accountable if an apprentice leaves the program for avoidable reasons, such as personal choice, rather than circumstances beyond their control.
“So far as the government is taking the burden off you, the guarantor or the parent who is supposed to pay for the apprenticeship program for the students, the government is seeking that you as a guarantor, once your ward drops out for reasons beyond his or her control, i.e for health grounds or the person just wants to drop out because the person feels that he or she wants to drop out, the guarantor will be held responsible to pay back the money that the government has invested in the apprentice,” Ayariga emphasized.
Ayariga clarified that only individuals with traceable salaries, such as government employees or chiefs, will be accepted as guarantors.
Speaking at the Young People’s Forum, he addressed concerns about political favoritism, assuring that the program is designed to benefit all Ghanaians, not just party affiliates.
“For guarantors, we will be looking at well-known people, maybe chiefs, assembly members, people who work in the government areas, people we can track their salaries or people who we can’t trace to pay back whatever monies that government would have invested in the wards who have eloped,” he noted.
The NAP, targeting unemployed youth aged 15-35, has received 70,000 applications, with only 10,000 participants to be selected this year. Ayariga emphasized inclusivity, stating that women and people with disabilities are part of the program.
Ayariga also announced that private companies willing to train apprentices for free may receive tax holidays through a public-private partnership.
“We are looking at a private public partnership. We are hoping that private people will decide to train the apprentices for free. And once they are training them for free, then we will have to talk to the Ministry of Finance to give them some tax holidays,” he explained.
Meanwhile, Kofi Asare, Executive Director of Africa Education Watch, urged the government to ensure a non-partisan selection process. He cautioned against repeating past mistakes where political actors influenced beneficiary selection, leading to failed outcomes.
“One of the reasons why past NAP has failed was that they were politicised. Many of them were implemented by party actors who were responsible for selecting beneficiaries. If we repeat that, we won’t make any headway. So, we want to see a NAP that is built on implementation structures that are non-partisan.
Let’s make use of the district assembly structures and the NYA and other agencies’ structures. Let’s not create makeshift structures and then populate them with party actors who will add political colour to it. It is important that we target 500,000 jobs in the next four years and be as apolitical as possible because unemployment has no political colours,” Asare stressed.
