Beneficiaries of the Nation’s Builders Corps (NABCo) in the Ashanti Region whose allowances have been in arrears will be paid by Friday, July 9, 2021.

This is according to the Ashanti Regional Director for the programme, Dennis Kwakwa, who was responding to the issues of undue delay in allowance payment, on Tuesday.

NABCO beneficiaries in the region are yet to be paid allowances for the months of April, May and June.

Speaking on Luv FM’s Luv In The Morning with David Akuetteh, Mr Kwakwa explained that the late disbursement of funds from the Ministry of Finance is sometimes to blame for the subsequent interruption of payment.

“NaBCo is doing well and I don’t think there’s anything else, apart from the fact that we have some arrears to pay this week and so the state of NaBCo is normal as it has been always. We owe trainees the months of April, May and June. We get money from the Ministry of Finance and, sometimes when there is a delay, it means we get delayed release from the Ministry and so as soon money hits our account, we make the payments to the beneficiaries.”

Although beneficiaries in other parts of the country have also complained over delayed stipends, Mr Kwakwa asserted that “NaBCo is probably the best youth-focused programme, that can pay up its beneficiaries but whatever it is, I think government sometimes might get a bit of difficulty and so our expectation has not been, to put our trainees through distress.”

NABCo was introduced by the Akufo-Addo administration in May 2018 as one of the interventions to address graduate unemployment, by engaging the raw talents of unemployed graduates and equipping them with skills through a process of value addition and training.

More than 100,000 graduates have been involved under the seven modules; namely, Civic Ghana Feed Ghana, Educate Ghana, Heal Ghana, Revenue Ghana, and Digitize Ghana and Enterprise Ghana.

The placement in the NaBCo lasts for a period of three years, with beneficiaries enjoying a stipend of Gh¢700 every month.