Akonkye (Ash), Aug 21, GNA - About 700 youth in the Atwima-Mponua District of Ashanti have been employed under the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP). They include teaching assistants, health extension workers, sanitary workers and community policing. Mr Wilberforce Owusu-Ansah, the District Chief Executive, said this when he and Mr Collins Addai, District Co-ordinator of NYEP, inspected some vegetable, ginger and maize farms at Akonkye near Nyinahin being cultivated under the youth in agriculture of the programme.

He said the government had supported 250 farmers with GH=A2100 (one million cedis) each as loans to expand their farms and appealed to traditional rulers to release land to the youth to enable them undertake farming under the NYEP. Mr Addai said the Atwima-Mponua District Assembly had rehabilitated the Gari Processing Factory at Akonkye that was abandoned some years back.

He said the government, under the NYEP, would provide adequate funds to cassava farmers to go into large-scale production to feed the factory. 21 Aug 07