Waste management company Zoomlion Ghana Limited has commended management of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) for its plans to restructure the Sanitation Module of the Youth Employment Programme to serve as a blueprint for other modules.
The company, which is the module’s implementing body, however said despite the commendable move it feels compelled to clarify issues regarding the programme, which it described as misleading.
“Without pre-empting any further discussion on the review or restructuring of the module, management however feels compelled to make some clarifications on the following issues raised at a recent YEA press briefing,” a Zoomlion press statement noted.
The issues, the statement added, include disparities in reported beneficiary numbers versus physical count, which stood at 45,320 against the 38,884 recorded by YEA.
It also said since inception of the programme in 2006, under the then National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP), Zoomlion has never issued any appointment letter to any beneficiary under the sanitation module.
Per its Management Service Agreement with YEA, it stated that employment of the beneficiaries is the sole responsibility of the Agency – which then has the mandate to issue appointment letters.
“Zoomlion wishes to state that the company’s number is captured in an album with the names, pictures and other details of beneficiaries for verification purposes. The shortfall however occurred as the result of a mixture of reasons, which the CEO of YEA – Mr. Justin Kodua Frimpong – has himself alluded to in a couple of media interviews,” it added.
Among other things, the statement explained that the reason for the discrepancy might have resulted from: late arrival or ‘no show; short notice; and transportation challenges in certain areas of the country.
According to the statement: “Most of the communities have means of transport to the district capital only on market days; therefore, it becomes difficult to travel to the district capital when it is not a market day. A case in point is Bole-Bamboi and Bunkpurugu Yooyoo districts in the Northern Region. Beneficiaries also had challenges regarding payment for transportation to headcount centres at the district/municipal capitals”.
It further said unlike YEA, Zoomlion spent more hours – in some cases spanning a day to two days – at particular headcount centres to ensure that no one was left out of the counting exercise.
“Zoomlion Ghana Limited has over the past 12 years been at the forefront of ensuring that Ghana is clean, green and healthy. Over, this period the company has built experience, capacity and logistics to serve the country as much as we can to ensure that the President’s vision of making every day a sanitation day and Accra the cleanest city in Africa a reality,” the statement noted.
