The National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) is to create additional 400,000 direct sustainable jobs nationwide by the first quarter of 2008. Under the programme, the module would be based on concrete and steel works such as youth in building and road construction, youth in tourism, youth in micro or small scale mining and youth in metal fabrication and youth entrepreneurship. The Minister for Manpower, Youth and Employment, Abu-Bakar Saddique, announced these at the passing out of 240 Community Protection Assistants (CPA) at Koforidua at the weekend under the Community Protection Unit (CPU) of the NYEP. He said to reduce the unemployment rate, the new module for instance, would use a large number of the unemployed youth in road construction in the rural areas to replace the heavy capital intensive machines. Mr Saddique said the graduation of the CPA in the Eastern Region was the 3rd batch after 329 youths graduated in Ashanti and the Northern Regions. The Minister said they were yet to be deployed to engage in directing traffic, patrolling neighborhoods and fostering community relations to complement the work of the police. He said since the inception of the NYEP, 16,383 youths have been employed in the agriculture sector, 23,021 for community education teaching assistants, 14,500 for health extension work and 5,041 for waste management and sanitation. Mr. Saddique said the Government through the programme was developing the youth of Ghana to become endowed people with civic competence and responsibilities. He said despite this, "some people are bent on sabotaging this laudable effort by copying the same format of the NYEP employment forms to confuse applicants." Mr. Saddique said apart from confusing the youth, the saboteurs also sold forms which were supposed to be free to erode the credibility of the programme. He called on the youth and all well meaning Ghanaians to be vigilant and report such people to the police. Mr Saddique also appealed to the public to cooperate with the CPAs at the various traffic lights and commended the police for training the youth within a short time and praised the Ministry of Interior for supporting the programme. Yaw Barimah, the Eastern Regional Minister, advised the CPAs to ensure good relationship with members of the community in which they would be deployed to work. He reminded them that even though they were trained by the police, they were not police officers and warned them against the erection of barriers to check traffic offences since it was not part of their role. Richard Amofa, The Regional coordinator of the NYEP, said the 240 CPAs were drawn from the New Juaben Municipality, Afram plains, Suhum-Kraboa-Coaltar and Birim South Districts. He said another batch of 170 CPAs were being trained to be posted to other districts in the region. The ceremony was witnessed by the Deputy Minister for Manpower, Youth and Employment, Mrs Frema Osei Opare, a host of District Chief Executives and a large section of the public. Source: GNA