Tamale, Aug. 7, GNA - Alhaji Abubakar Saddique Boniface, Minister of Manpower, Youth and Employment (MMYE) has indicated that the Youth Employment Programme (YEP) is aimed at providing gainful employment for the youth of the country and not "jobs for the boys" as being circulated in certain circles.

He said the YEP was unique in the sense that it was building on the experiences of past employment programmes to enrich it and give it a wider scope of creating employment for the youth but not on partisan considerations.

Alhaji Boniface was addressing a day's workshop organised for District Chief Executives (DCEs) and District Coordinators of the YEP drawn from the Northern, Upper East and Upper West regions in Tamale on Monday.

The objectives of the workshop were to educate the DCEs and the DCs on the guidelines and different modules to be used for job creation in their districts.

He said the programme had been so structured that funding for the various sectors it would be employing people had already been provided for in the budget while the job avenues were being created in collaboration with other sector ministries.

He mentioned some of the sources for funding the YEP to include 15 percent of the District Assemblies Common Fund, 10 per cent of the GETFUND, 10 per cent of the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), 10 percent of the Road Fund and 20 per cent from investment.

In the education sector he said it was envisaged that 13,900 pupil teachers would be recruited to fill vacancies in schools at the basic level, saying that those employed would initially be given a week induction course after which they would undergo two weeks intensive training.

Alhaji Boniface urged District Chief Executives and the YEP coordinators in the Northern part of the country to take the agriculture aspect of the programme seriously since it held a lot of potential for providing the youth with employment and also producing food for the people.

He asked the programme implementers to encourage the youth to go into the cultivation of vegetables, mushrooms, the rearing of rabbits, snails, grass cutter and guinea fowls.

Alhaji Boniface said it would give a lot of employment to the youth in areas such as auxiliary nurses assistance in the health sector, community policing, waste and sanitation and vacation employment for students.

He urged all the implementing agencies to liaise with one another for the successful implementation of the programme.

He said application forms for employment under the YEP were to be decentralised to the district sub-structures but were not also for sale.