The National Service Authority (NSA) has suspended, with immediate effect, the GH¢60 deduction from the allowances of National Service Personnel without their consent.
The NSA, acting on the directive of the Sector Minister of Youth, Empowerment and Development, George Opare Addo, and the NSA Board, intervened to halt the deduction pending a comprehensive review.
At a media briefing in Accra yesterday, the President of NASPA, Abdul Wahab Mohammed, said it had "listened intently" to the concerns, frustrations and questions raised by service personnel across the country over the past few days, and assured personnel that no further deductions would be made in connection with the training scheme.
Context
The suspension follows a petition from a group calling itself the Concerned National Service Personnel Association of Ghana, which in a statement dated July 17, 2026, questioned the legal basis for the deduction.
The group asked NASPA to specify which provision of its constitution, or of the law governing the NSA, authorised a compulsory deduction, and whether the NSA had formally approved it.
Mr Mohammed explained that the initiative was conceived in December last year after its National Executive Council (NEC), made up of Regional Presidents from all sixteen regions, deliberated on how to improve the post-service employability of personnel.
He said it drew on a 2024 pilot capacity-building programme in the Greater Accra Region, which it said had yielded positive feedback, before deciding to scale the initiative nationwide.
Following NEC's approval, Mr Mohammed said, NASPA entered into a contractual agreement with Zeus Atlas Limited to deliver the training, insisting that, as an autonomous body, it had the right to enter into such agreements independently, without oversight from the NSA.
He said the NSA management was formally notified after the contract had already been signed, a practice, the NASPA president described as consistent with how NASPA had historically operated.
Cost
He said the estimated contribution for the programme was GH¢15 a month, amounting to about GH¢180 over a full service year and covering practical training and a certificate of completion.
The NASPA president said it had formally requested the NSA to facilitate a deduction of GH¢60 to cover a four-month learning period, which was the amount taken from personnel's last allowance payment.
The association conceded, however, that “the financial commitment required may not have been reasonable for all service personnel”.
