A financial analyst, Sydney Casely-Hayford, has made a direct call on President John Dramani Mahama to completely terminate the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) programme.
According to him, the president must never ever revive the crisis-plagued programme in any shape or form.
The erstwhile Kufuor administration started the National Youth Employment Programme, which was later transformed into GYEEDA under the Mills rule.
It started as a state-sponsored initiative to alleviate economic pressure on the nation’s unemployed youth by providing them with skills and short-term jobs.
However, GYEEDA has over the years been hit by a series of financial scandals, provoking public anger.
In 2013, news reports over financial malfeasance forced a government investigation into the activities of GYEEDA.
The investigations recorded evidence of corruption and colossal misuse of public funds under the programme, compelling President John Dramani Mahama to order complete overhaul of GYEEDA’s operations.
The president also directed authorities at GYEEDA to freeze all modules under the programme until ongoing reforms come to a close.
Mr. Casely-Hayford said on Saturday that the programme “was a complete waste of time and money.”
“For me, I have always seen it as a corruption issue. I have not seen it as any other thing else,” he told radio listeners on Saturday.
He was speaking on The Big Issue, a news analysis programme on Accra-based Citi 97.3 FM.
“I have always said that this GYEEDA thing was just a way to conduit money out of the system and into a political party’s hands,” he added, accusing the current management of GYEEDA of attempting to perpetuate the cycle of corruption at the Agency.
His comments came two days after the Office of the President ordered GYEEDA authorities to withdraw an advert they had placed, inviting new bids to manage the Agency’s ICT module.
Mr. Casely-Hayford said government must re-channel State resources being sunk into GYEEDA into improving the nation’s vocational educational institutions to help train a formidable skilled workforce for the country.
