Educate rural folk on civic duties : Veep urges NSS personnel
The Vice-President, Mr Kwesi Amissah-Arthur, has asked national service persons posted to the rural parts of the country to educate the people on their civic duties and also enlighten them on ongoing development initiatives.
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He said some Ghanaians looked up to national service personnel to help educate the people to understand issues better and cited the ongoing exhibition of the voters register as an opportunity the personnel could use to educate the people on the need to check their names.
Mr Amissah-Arthur made the call when he addressed scores of national service persons in Accra on Thursday in an event dubbed: ‘A day of gratitude’.
Evolution of national service
The event, which had the theme: “National service, Building the nation”, is the second in the series and designed for the government to show appreciation to national service personnel for their contribution to national development.
The Vice-President began his address by recalling how the National Service Scheme (NSS) came about under the I.K. Acheampong regime and how it had evolved over the years.
He stated that he too undertook national service, having served in 1973, which helped him to know other parts of the country.
Mr Amissah-Arthur explained that the scheme evolved from one in which students who received higher education were made to pay back to society and to understand the culture of other parts of the country.
He expressed the government’s appreciation to personnel of the NSS for their invaluable contribution to the nation’s human resource.
Service to country
The National Service Act of 1980, Act 426, was promulgated and passed by the Parliament of Ghana to give legal and constitutional backing to the scheme which, as currently constituted, provides newly qualified graduates the opportunity to have practical exposure on the job, both in the public and the private sectors, as part of their civic responsibility to the state.
Ghanaian students who graduate from accredited tertiary institutions are required under law to render a one-year national service to the country.
The NSS is Ghana’s agency mandated to formulate policies and structures for national service.
A service person under the law is issued a certificate of national service after the successful completion of the service and an assessment form duly commented on and signed by the service person should have been completed by the employer.
Executive Director
Earlier in his remarks, the acting Executive Director of the NSS, Dr Michael Kpessah-Whyte, had stated that the event was to appreciate national service personnel for their dedication to the country, as well as to user agencies for the past year.
He talked about the contribution of personnel of the NSS to state institutions and said he was impressed when a team from the NSS embarked on a visit to some user agencies to assess the work of personnel deployed to those organisations.
He remarked that NSS had taken a number of steps to ensure that its activities were firmly sustained.
Against that backdrop, he said, some officials from the scheme returned from Italy after being selected for excellent public service delivery.
Selected national service persons from the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions were given the opportunity to address their colleagues on their experiences.
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