Accra, April 15, GNA - Vice President John Dramani Mahama on Friday announced that the World Bank has supported the National Youth Employment Programme with $65 Million to train more youth in employable skills.

Under the programme, he said 10,000 youth would be trained in dressmaking, carpentry, basketry, Shea butter extraction and processing, grass cutter rearing and bamboo works. Vice President Mahama was speaking at the graduation ceremony of over 600 dressmaking beneficiaries under the NYEP and Ansongtaba Cottage Industry and Exchange programme (Private entity) in the Greater Accra Region, and the launch of other trades and vocations. He said the amount would help the NYEP to sustain its modules, which had over the years relied on meagre resources from other sectors of the economy.

The six months programme, which was undertaken by Ansongtaba Cottage Industry and Exchange Programme, would ensure the training of both males and females under the dressmaking module of NYEP. Vice President Mahama said under the World Bank support scheme, a total of 2,000 head porters and truck pushers had been selected throughout the country for training to gain employable skills in their areas of jurisdiction.

He said government would under the NYEP training projects move away from the formal vocational skills training in which the youth were enrolled in the country's vocational institutes alone. The Vice President said the youth would be sent to master craftsmen and women for training and would receive certificates upon completion of their programmes.

He said wealth creation would be woven round the human resources development and not to totally rely on natural resources, which could elude the entire nation.

Mr Abuga Pele, National Coordinator of the NYEP, announced that 800 physically challenged persons had so far been trained under the dressmaking module adding that 93the NYEP will not discriminate against anyone in its training programmes."

He said the NYEP in Ghana was recently hailed in an international youth conference as the best in Africa and gave the assurance that everything would be done to achieve its goals. Mr Pele said all training activities would be tailored towards job creation and sustenance, and called on partners to continue to support the programme to enable it meet targets. Dr George Agulijam, Executive Director of ACI&EP, the main implementor of the Dressmaking Module of the NYEP, said a total of 7,950 youth had been trained under the programme throughout the country.

He said a backlog of 23,000 youth were slated to be trained in subsequent years and called for a closer collaboration between the private and public sectors to enable the NYEP to achieve its objectives.