Sylvester Tetteh
The National Youth Authority (NYA) is set to train about 2000 young volunteers to argument government’s efforts in the fight against the novel COVID-19 pandemic.
The authority will train and equip additional thousands with entrepreneurial skills ostensibly to address the issues of job losses resulting from the pandemic.
Speaking at the Ministry of Information press briefing today, April 16, 2020, Chief Executive Officer of NYA, Sylvester Tetteh stated that about 2000 young people across the country will be trained to educate the public and also provide assistance to frontline workers as the country intensifies its combat strategies to stem the pandemic.
“Over 500 megaphones with recorded messages that will be approved by the Ministry of Information will be given to some of the youth to educate Ghanaians, not only in the cities, but also in the villages and rural communities. Also, the youth with health background will provide the needed support to frontline workers in the area of contact tracing and others,” he added.
Mr. Tetteh acknowledged the economic hardships, specifically job losses, that is associated with the pandemic and assured the Ghanaian youth the readiness of the NYA to implement programmes to offset the jobs losses and reduce the hardships.
“The youth are the worse affected by the pandemic and as part of measures to support them, a baseline studies into job losses and health related issues are being carried out by NYA. This will help us, with the support of government, design and implement entrepreneurial programmes that would drastically deal with the issues of COVID-19 related job losses,” he asserted.
The NYA launched a youth driven campaign against the COVID-19 pandemic recently and followed it up with massive donation of PPEs worth over GHC700,000.00 to the Ministry of Health.