After several months of protests to demand their unpaid allowances, some beneficiaries of the Nation Builders Corps (NABCO) say the government has failed to pay them.
The trainees have since the beginning of the year made several appeals to the NABCO Secretariat for the payment of their GHC 700 monthly allowance.
They, however, say this has not been successful as their allowances have not been paid yet.
Some of the beneficiaries expressed their reservations about the development.
“Article 24 of the 1992 Constitution tells us that we all have equal rights to work and be paid but some NABCO trainees have been meted with injustice. Several petitions to the CEO’s office have not yielded results. All they do is to bring heavily armed men to intimidate us,” a beneficiary complained.
Another beneficiary said some NABCO trainees had “worked for six good months without receiving anything.”
“Government should do something about it. We are really suffering,” the beneficiary added.
“If you talk about arrears then people will say after all you were staying at home. Are the nation arrears only for NPP people or NDC people or for only politicians? We are all Ghanaians so if another party could not give us jobs and by grace, you have given us jobs, does it mean you should starve us?” another beneficiary asked.
Beneficiaries of the programme have been pushing for the payment of their allowances for months.
A few weeks ago, some beneficiaries picketed at the NABCO head office over their delayed allowance.
Delay in payment of allowances due to ‘natural challenges’ – NABCO Boss
In explaining reasons for the delay, management of the initiative recently said issues of non-payment of allowances that have plagued the implementation of NABCO are just natural.
The program’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Dr. Ibrahim Anyass said circumstances such as incomplete records on the part of some recruits genuinely hinder the payment process.
Dr. Anyass said complaints about the non-payment of allowances emanate from the usual mechanical hitches associated with the initial implementation of any particular support system.
“One will be naïve to think that, you can have a new creation such as the Nation Builders Corps on such scale and extension and not have issues or challenges. For us, we just see this as natural to the implementation of the program. Some circumstances present themselves for people to relocate. These issues are natural because this is a human institution and so people had to move and they find that they were stuck with the data. Those were just mere implementation stage issues but as we speak most of those issues have been resolved,” he said.
Dr. Anyass also indicated that despite these setbacks, all allowances due trainees are being paid.
The programme, which has been criticized as unsustainable by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC), forms part of government’s commitment towards addressing the high youth unemployment in the country.
Source: Nii Ayikwei
