The Planning Monitoring and Evaluation Officer of the National Service Scheme (NSS), Alhassan Seidu, has told final year students of Tamale Polytechnic that monetary allowance alone must not be their motivation to serve in the national service scheme.
He said serving in the NSS should be about improving the lives of people in the communities they are posted to serve.
Alhassan Seidu was making the remarks at an orientation programme organised by the National Service secretariat to educate potential service personnel in Tamale on Thursday 11th April, 2013.
The purpose of the orientation programme was to equip students with knowledge on the workings of the national service and to guide students to register for this year’s postings.
He said the value of transforming people’s lives while undertaking the National Service, is more worthwhile than the monetary rewards.
Mr. Alhassan said the spirit and patriotism of past National Service personnel led to the establishment of NSS farms which are currently producing hundreds bags of maize to feed students in Brong Ahafo and Ashanti regions, as well as at ptatients at he Pantan General Hospital in Accra.
“These schools needed (this help) because their subventions had delayed…this could have led to the closing down of the school but National Service helped with 10,000 bags of maize and other items”, he intimated.
Also, the graduates who studied agriculture in the university applied their knowledge on the farms to facilitate efficient farming practices to produce more yield, he revealed.
He also added that since 2009 the intention of the National Service has always been to support the educational sector, and in 2012 the National service secretariat deployed over 46,000 service personnel, representing 46% of the total number of service personnel to educational sector.
He said most of these educational service personnel were posted to deprived schools that badly needed teachers in the classrooms.
Some of the polytechnic students who spoke at the programme during the question time raised concerns about the rationale behind posting service personnel to direct traffic and suggested it should be struck out.