Akufo-Addo is covenant-keeping President
The National Organiser of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Henry Nana Boakye, has described President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo as a covenant-keeping President.
That, he said, was as a result of the fulfilment of his numerous promises made to Ghanaians during the 2016 electioneering.
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He made this assertion in Koforidua in the Eastern Region last Monday during the first in the series of "The youth must know this", a platform instituted by the youth wing of the NPP to set the records straight, advocate and amplify the achievements of the government and deal with the lies of the opponents of the party.
Free SHS
According to Mr Boakye, the free SHS and the double-track system had employed over 8,000 teaching and non-teaching staff and there was an additional construction of 800 emergency projects nationwide to support the increasing number and also to end the double-track system.
He said in the first year of the Free SHS policy, the rate of students who did not enrol after being placed fell to 17 per cent from the annual average of 28 per cent, adding that that number continued to drop every year.
Nursing training allowance
Mr Boakye said just like the teacher trainee allowance cancelled by former President John Mahama under the NDC government, President Akufo-Addo had restored the nursing training allowance, adding that currently, over 116,000 midwives and nursing trainees were benefiting, just like the Nation Builders Corps (NaBCo) where over 100,000 young men and women had been offered employment opportunities in order to reduce the hardships on them.
Youth in Agriculture
According to Mr Boakye, since the NPP came into power, it had renewed the focus on agriculture through the hugely "successful Youth in Agriculture and Planting for Food and Jobs programmes. The Youth in Agriculture programme employed 11,500 people in 2017, 15,000 in 2018 and is poised to engage 33,000 in 2019, thus giving hope to many young people."
"We promised a one-district, one-factory policy and we are delivering in government. So far, 181 factories are at various stages of construction and operation across the country. Eight operational companies have also employed 495 people,” he added.
TVET voucher
Mr Boakye mentioned the Technical, Vocational Education and Training (TVET) voucher which aims at providing skills upgrade training to apprentices and craftsmen in the informal sector which has recorded over 3,156 beneficiaries, entrepreneurship training to 50,000 youth and start-up grants to 5,000 others.
It also aims at increasing capitation grant absorption of registration fees of over 600,000 pupils of public junior high schools who sat the Basic Education Certificate Examination and paying all arrears owed by the Scholarship Secretariat to schools in the Northern Ghana Feeding Grant and students on foreign scholarship.
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On employment, Mr Boakye said the government, through the Youth Employment Agency, had engaged 101,000 youth in various employment modules, with an additional 125,000 set to be engaged this year.
Others, he said, included 10,000 youth in the afforestation programme, employment of 53,000 nursing trainees, 3,000 Arabic teachers, 54,000 nurses, 45,000 teachers and 882 agricultural extension officers, among others.
“There is more reason to suggest that more jobs have been created than what official data has captured, and for us in the NPP, it's important to remind the Ghanaian youth that under NDC's John Mahama, public sector employment was put on hold and erratic power supply alone collapsed more than one million jobs.
With all these records and performance of the NPP and Nana Addo’s government, we sincerely believe that the comeback of former President John Mahama will be a bad omen for the youth of this country," Mr Boakye said.
He encouraged the youth of the country to throw their weight behind the NPP since it was the only party with youth-friendly policies.