The Youth Employment Agency (YEA) has kick-started a process for recruitment of some fifteen thousand (15,000) unemployed Ghanaian youth nationwide as Community Protection Assistants (CPAs) under a collaboration with the Ghana Police Service (GPS).

This is in pursuance of the Agency’s mandate to create jobs for the unemployed youth of the country, as well as support the Ghana Police Service in preventive and social community policing across the country.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Agency, Mr. Kofi Baah Agyepong, who is championing an agenda to make the Agency the base of employment among all sectors of the economy, believes that empowering young people through the creation of stop-gap measures, promotion of skills training and entrepreneurship is a major means of reducing unemployment while ensuring economic growth.

On Wednesday, the Agency began a national physical examination exercise in all its district offices as part of a process to shortlist the first batch of 5,000 applicants into the module.

Scores of young men and women who had trooped to the YEA District Offices in all regions were seen going through assessment of their heights, visual examination and physical appearance amongst others.

According to Mr. Agyepong, who embarked on a tour of some examination centres together with some members of his Management team, this is an opportune time to be recruited as a beneficiary of the Youth Employment Agency.

He assured the beneficiaries of consistent flow of their stipends at the end of the month and a possible increase in the stipends.

What is more exciting for Mr. Agyepong and to the beneficiaries is his commitment to ensuring that most of the beneficiaries with the requisite certification, skills and knowledge will be drafted into the mainstream Police Service during their enlistment.

"You are undergoing screening for Body Selection and Physical Examinations as part of the eligibility criteria for the recruitment exercise because, this time around, we want to ensure that those of you who will perform will be absorbed into the Ghana Police Service as the official quota of the Agency," he said.

The screening exercise will be followed by a training program to be rolled out in three phases for the 15,000 successful applicants.

Each phase will have a batch of 5,000 successful applicants undergo the mandatory three weeks of intensive training by the Ghana Police Service at the various Police Training Colleges across the country.

Recruitment of these 15,000 Community Protection Assistants is coming on the heels of the passing out of 6,000 youth under the Community Health Workers (CHWs) module a fortnight ago.

For Mr Agyepong, the creation of sustainable programmes and jobs is top on his agenda as CEO of the YEA. Especially, in this period of economic hardships, it is his vision to reduce the burden of Ghanaians by creating a lot of jobs to solidify President Akufo-Addo's One Million Jobs Agenda.

He also hoped to collaborate more effectively with the private sector in pursuit of making YEA the pivot of job creation in Ghana.