The Minister for Youth and Sports has said that his outfit will soon introduce a programme to train the youth in how to repair broken streetlights across the country.

Isaac Asiamah told the Public Account Committee [PAC] of Parliament Tuesday that the programme is aimed at providing jobs for the youth and more street lights to illuminate the dark streets, Joseph Opoke Gapo has reported. 

“What I have observed is that we purchase these streetlights all the time but due to lack of maintenance,  they go off after few months. And this development is affecting everyone, including Members of Parliament and District Chief Executives. So what we are embarking upon is a project to train young people on how to repair streetlights and maintain them across the country,” Asiama revealed to PAC

The Minister for Youth and Sports attended the PAC sitting to respond to queries contained in the 2016 Auditor General’s Report which among other things included why the building of the head office complex for the National Youth Authority has stalled for many years.

Between January 2017 and March 2018, the government has facilitated the creation of 1,096,404 jobs in both the public and private sectors of the economy, the Minister of Employment said in May 2018 at the launch of the Nation Builders Corps (NABCO) in Kumasi. 

According to Ignatius Baffour Awuah, these jobs were only in the formal sector and "so what happened in the informal sector is not even accounted for here."

Speaking today at the PAC, the Minister for Youth and Sports, Isaac Asiama, also announced the government’s intentions to revamp interest in vocational and technical education, which he claimed the introduction of Free Senior High School education [SHS], has dampened.

“We are going to make vocational education more attractive, it will also be free. We are going to upgrade the existing facilities,” he said.