A little over 50,000 people are expected to be deployed to an assortment of institutions and companies for the 2010/2011 National Service posting, starting from October. Registration for this year's service is closed, and the Executive Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS), Mr. Vincent Senam Kuagbenu, is anticipated to announce the beginning of the posting before the close of the month. The NSS was established in 1973 by a military decree with the mandate to mobilize and deploy Ghanaian citizens of 18 years and above especially newly qualified university graduates and diplomats on national priority development programmes that contribute to improving the quality of life of the ordinary Ghanaian for a one year mandatory national service. The service has the mandate to mobilise and deploy any person to whom the scheme applies to be engaged in the field of agriculture, co-operatives, education, health, local government, military, rural development, youth programmes and any other areas that NSS may prescribe. The core values of the scheme are to provide service excellence integrity and accountability, responsible leadership, fostering national unity, social cohesion and integration. Also, it is to train service personnel to develop their potentials and create opportunities for future employment, encourage the youth to become change agents in society, provide orientation and re-orientation to imbibe and internalise in them a positive work culture. The National Service Scheme currently deploys between 40,000 mid 50,000 mandatory service personnel and 20,000 volunteers annually. The Director of Public Relations, Mr. Ambrose Entsiwah Jnr., speaking in an interview with the Times, said the deployment strategy was influenced by the government's socio-economic development agenda for the country, adding that with the available skill mix, the service personnel were deployed to a variety of occupational fields. The Ghana Education Service (GES) is the major beneficiary of the services of the service personnel since the education sector always has a deficit and needs more teachers in the classrooms especially in the rural areas. An average of 60% of personnel are deployed to the sector annually. He said the scheme also intervene in the health sector by posting personnel to deprived communities to assist in the provision of potable water and appropriate sanitation facilities. According to him, the scheme had become the source of leverage to most public service institutions including the district assemblies, which used national service personnel to meet their social service obligations. Source: Ghanaian Times