‘We need resources to harness potential of youth’
The Director of the National Youth Authority (NYA), Mr Stephen Mensah Etsibah, has called for the strengthening of the structures and allocation of resources to help harness the potential of the youth for national development.
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According to him, the lack of resources and negligence on the part of leadership to invest in the activities of the NYA accounted for the inactivity of the youth in most districts.
Lack of resources
“The NYA is operating in only 72 of the districts. The fact is that there is a freeze on employment for the youth to take up positions at the local level, so the structure is distorted”, he said.
He was speaking at a youth advocacy and dialogue programme on assessment of the structures for youth engagement organised by the Youth Bridge Foundation, in Accra.
Mr Etsibah explained that to arrest some of these challenges, his outfit had presented a bill to Parliament on the NYA, which focused on 19 key areas.
He said entrepreneurship development was one of the key areas that would be vigorously pursued if Parliament approved the bill.
To make the youth relevant in national development, he advocated capacity-building workshops and reviving the youth development fund to support activities of the youth.
He, however, advised the youth to be innovative and avoid the tendency of relying on the government at all times for support.
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Youth ministry
Meanwhile, the Programmes Manager of the Youth Bridge Foundation (YBF), a non-governmental youth advocacy group which seeks to sensitise the youth to channel their energy positively to societal development, Mr Douglas Quartey, called for the creation of a separate ministry for the youth to facilitate the formulation and implementation of policies to harness the potential of the youth for national development.
According to him, even though the youth formed a greater energy base of the country, they were often left out when it came to representation, participation and engagement in the decision-making process of the country.
“During the 2012 elections, it was discovered that the youth formed 58 per cent of the registered voters. The current population structure also shows that people between ages 15 and 35 constitute 38 per cent of the population. Yet, the voices of these people are not heard”, he said.
Presenting the findings of the research, Mr Quartey said despite the fact that most of the districts had well laid-out governance structures in place, partisan politics, ignorance on the part of the youth and apathy to capacity-building programmes were major setbacks to the effective participation of the youth in decision making.
In view of the above, he argued that the creation of a youth ministry to superintend over the activities of the youth would be the way to go to tap the energy of the youth.