Cabinet has approved an increase in the allocation of proceeds of the Communications Service Tax (CST) to the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) from 20 per cent to 60 per cent. The CST, which was introduced to serve as a source of funding for the NYEP, could not help much because, according to the authorities, the 20 per cent allocation of proceeds from the tax allocated to the programme was inadequate for its operations. A highly placed source at the NYEP Secretariat, who disclosed this to the Daily Graphic in Accra yesterday, said following, the approval, the increment and payment would be effected by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning. According to the source, the purpose for introducing the CST had, by far, been defeated, as it failed to resolve the problems for which the tax was intended. The source said the percentage that was earmarked for the NYEP was not enough since it was initially arranged to have at least 70 per cent of proceeds from the tax channelled into the programme. "With this increase, we believe the government has done its part and it is now up to us to mobilise funds from other sources to augment our financial base," the source stated. It expressed the belief that the period when youth employment beneficiaries were not paid for several months was becoming a thing of the past, and underscored the fact that the increment in the CST was a guarantee to permanently put an end to that phenomenon. When the National Co-ordinator of the NYEP, Mr Abuga Pele, was reached for his comments, he said any upward adjustment in the allocation of CST to the programme was a sure way of creating more modules for the NYEP with an attendant increase in engaging more unemployed youth in the programme. He said about 500,000 unemployed youth across the country were projected to be recruited under the NYEP by 2012, adding that the Youth in Agriculture programme alone was to engage more than 100,000 people by the close of201O. Mr Pele announced that additional modules such as youth in prisons, youth in fire service and youth in immigration had been created with an initial total of 11,200 youth expected to begin training next week to be absorbed into those security agencies to perform specifically assigned roles. Youth in mining and youth in construction were also modules that are in the offing, he added. Source: Daily Graphic