Employees under the National Youth Employment Programme have threatened to embark on an industrial action next week to back the demands for unpaid salaries. Workers under the programme have not been paid for the past four months. The workers say the non-payment of their salaries has brought untold hardship to them and their families. Speaking on Joy FM’s mid-day news about the intended demonstration, the Greater Accra regional spokesperson of the workers, Kwame Sefa said the workers under the programme had noticed some inconsistencies in the handling of the matter. According to him, the Minister of Manpower, Youth and Employment, Nana Akomea, had in a meeting held with them attributed the non-payment of their salaries to the unavailability of money He said they, however, heard the minister saying in Parliament afterwards that he had signed a cheque and that the salaries of the workers would be paid immediately. That, he noted, turned out to be a farce as the salaries remained unpaid months after that statement in Parliament. The workers have planned to sit down with the Minister to reconsider the contractual agreement as well as their conditions of service. Meanwhile about a hundred National Service Personnel have staged a demonstration in the Brong Ahafo Region to demand the payment of equitable allowances due them. The service personnel stormed the premises of Skyy FM in Sunyani to express their grievances. They claimed they were being discriminated against by the national Service Secretariat which they claimed had paid the allowances of other personnel and excluded them. They claim they are yet to be paid their October allowances. They also want to know the criteria for paying the allowances. Responding to the concerns the Sunyani Co-ordinator of the National Service Co-ordinator, Ebenezer Asante said that a directive from the headquarters asked instructed that personnel should be paid in October 2007 based on the date they reported and assumed duty. He added also that every year that the secretariat goes through the ritual of postings they face the same issues. He said the headquarters had directed that anyone posted beyond the 20th of October 2007, should be posted-dated to the 1st of November. He said they used to graduate the personnel and give them a portion of their allowances, but that has been stopped since the directive from the headquarters.