YEA trains 6,000 community health workers

Six thousand young Ghanaians trained under the Community Health Workers (CHWs) scheme of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) have started work.

They will receive their first allowance at the end of this month.

The Chief Executive of the YEA, Kofi Agyapong, who disclosed this in interview with the Daily Graphic last Friday, also indicated that 2,000 youth under the prison warden assistants scheme had also started training.

They were part of 25,000 young Ghanaians being enrolled in various modules under the scheme by December this year, he added.

Training

Mr Agyapong said in the next few days, 15,000 community police assistants, in batches of 5,000, would also commence their training at various training depots of the Ghana Police Service.

He explained that the training for the wardens and community police assistants had become possible after a rigorous selection regime executed by the security agencies throughout the country.

Exit plan

He noted that in discussions prior to the training, it was agreed in principle, through the signing of memoranda of understanding, that the Ghana Police Service, the Ghana Prisons Service and the Ghana Health Service would offer the youth working under the schemes a quota when it came to employment or recruitment.

He said because the young ones, after their training, would become familiar with some workings and the environment of the police, the prisons and the health services, recruiting them into those services was considered a priority.

He said the 25,000 youth being recruited were aside from the over 1,000 who secured some form of employment during the various job fairs organised across the country.

Mr Agyapong said the agency was in talks with private security firms to also recruit from the YEA stock.

He indicated that the YEA would sign a contract with a German construction firm that would recruit 700 artisans from Ghana, train them and offer them employment.

He noted that immediately the contract was signed in the course of this month, the YEA would open its portal for interested Ghanaian youth to apply and those who qualified would be given orientation by the agency, after which the German company would train them.

“We acknowledge the fact that we are in difficult times, but we are not resting. We want to offer some help to the youth. To do this is not easy, but we are defying the odds to offer practical assistance,” Mr Agyapong added.