Asamankese (E/R), Aug. 26, GNA - Some 288 young men and women in the West Akyem District have been registered to take part in the Youth in Agriculture Programme to produce maize, vegetable, grasscutter and also do pig rearing.

Announcing this at the last sessional meeting of the West Akyem District Assembly at Asamankese on Friday, the District Chief Executive, Mr Kwabena Sintim Aboagye, said 61 youth would also be trained as Health Care Assistants.

Some 103 will also be trained as teaching assistants to fill vacancies in basic schools, 50 to be trained as waste and sanitation managers and another 50 to be trained under the community protection system.

Mr Sintim-Aboagye said funds had already been made available for waste and sanitation management component of the programme that would soon take off.

The DCE said a new fruit-canning factory at Asuokaw was recruiting workers and it was expected that 350 workers would be employed and that most of the applicants selected for interview were from the district. Mr Sintim-Aboagye said this year the assembly was expected to receive Common Fund allocation of 6,174,000.000 cedis but had so far received 2,133,889,169 cedis.

He said 409,299,785 cedis had already been received for the National Youth Employment Programme, hoping to be used for the sanitation and beautification of the major towns for a start and 400 million cedis also received under the HIPC relief fund for this year. On local revenue generation, Mr Sintim-Aboagye recalled that the assembly approved a target of 1,603,998,000 cedis for the year, saying as at the end of June, 748,985,000 cedis representing 47 per cent of the amount had been collected.

The DCE observed that as an institution charged with providing social and economic amenities and offering programmes to alleviate poverty among the people in the district, it was the duty of the assembly to take stringent decisions towards generating additional revenue to complement government's efforts to carry out the many competing demands on its hands.