NSS to review tertiary graduates one-year national service period

The compulsory 1-year national service period public tertiary institution graduates use to serve the nation before being posted permanently is currently under review, the Executive Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS) has said.

In an interview monitored by AcademicWeek, Honourable Osei Assibey Antwi said his outfit in due course will submit a report of their assessment of the NSS Act to the management of the Ghana National Scheme for consideration.

“The Act previously mandated service personnel to serve for two years but was later reverted to one year. We are currently working on a proposal on the year’s personnel to use for national service,” the NSS Executive Director stated.

The National Service Director indicated the Scheme has studied the national service of about 20 countries including Kenya, Gambia and Namibia and that a final draft within a month time will be submitted to the central government.

Mr Osei Assibey has also indicated the National Service Scheme (NSS) in 2023 academic year will become an employable agency to ensure personnel who completed the mandatory one-year service are employed permanently.

The NSS Chief Executive Officer noted that the programmes to be rolled out among others would equip service individuals with the requisite skills to create their enterprises after their national service each year.

The programmes he told 2021/2022 Lad Dade-Kotopon Municipality National Service Personnel Association (NASPA) come after statistics showed that service persons add up to the unemployed numbers each year.

“Per our records, only 24% of National Service Personnel reliably find jobs while a whole 76% end up jobless at the end of each service year, so we are using these programmes to work on the numbers to turn the figures around,” he said.

The newly introduced initiatives Hon Osei Antwi said included Pathways to Sustainable Employment (PaSE) Project Ghana Tech Lab (GTL) and Venture Building Program (NSS and University of Professional Studies, Accra (UPSA).

Other modules the former Kumasi Mayor said include GNSS/Ghana Enterprises Agency, the Stanbic Graduate Transition Support Program (GTSP), the NSS-GTA Support program and the Youth in Greenhouse Enterprise Project.

Mr Osei-Asibbey Antwi indicated the initiatives, which are currently running as pilot programmes would be run as fully operational modules with an increased number of personnel intakes by the beginning of the next service year.