The government decision to continue with the Nation’s Builders Corp (NABCO) has received major criticism from one of the pressure groups in the country, the Citizen Watch.

According to Citizen Watch, the government cannot sustain the current model of NABCO, hence the need to redirect the programme to the private sector.

“With the ongoing digitisation programme, we believe the government should reduce its labour strength, and redirect NABCO to the private sector. This would help ease pressure on the wage bill, which accounts for almost 60% of our total revenue”, said in a statement issued and signed by Francis Agbenyegah, the Convener of the group.

For the past three years, the government has spent over ¢3 billion as wages on 100,000 NABCO recruits.

This, the Citizen Watch is of the view that the monies could have built factories across the country to support the private sector, whereby the youth would be in outsourcing programmes and also take part of the agricultural value chain, which is more sustainable.

 “The ¢3 billion could have be channeled through the ADB Bank, GCB Bank, National Investment Bank, among others for the incubation of SMEs to create a more sustainable income generating ventures. We need to build entrepreneurs in the country to propel growth as we keeping saying the private sector is the engine of growth” it said.

The statement further added “we are grateful to the Finance Minister, Ken Ofori Atta, for letting us know the true state of affairs and any further expenditure on NABCO from the government without integrating them into the private sector would be a waste of resources. The government should realign the NABCO project to be more private sector driven”.

Citizen Watch research also revealed that out of 500 NABCO recruits interviewed, 80% t of them either seat idle at work or don’t come to work, but receives monthly allowances due to lack of monitoring , which clearly shows that the programme is a failed venture, hence requires a redirection.