By Laudia Sawer, GNA
Tema, Nov. 14, GNA – The Nation Builders
Corps (NaBCO) Trainees had been urged to use the opportunity provided by
government through the special initiatives to fulfil the mandate for the
national development and build personal brand identity for the job market.
NABCO is one of government’s flagship
programmes aimed at providing jobs under the seven modules of the programme for
the large number of unemployed graduates in the country.
Mr Percy Opata, Tema Metropolitan NABCO
Coordinator, gave the advice when he called on Mr Francis Ameyibor, Tema
Regional Manager of the Ghana News Agency to deliberate on how best to
collaborate to achieve the objectives of the two institutions.
Mr Opata said the government was investing
heavily through the NABCO Trainees in the youth of the country, so the trainees
must take advantage of the opportunity to acquire other skills which will open
wider job prospects for them, stressing that, “The State is helping to shape
the youths for the job world so they must work had to improve their market
value.
“They must build themselves and make their
names a brand name wherever they have been posted, having at the back of their
minds that their outputs were what will talk for them and serve as a testimony
for them in the world of jobs”.
He therefore encouraged the NaBCO Trainees
to also take advantage of the newly introduced online courses to acquire other
needed employable and self-development skills.
Mr Opata also urged leadership of government
institutions that Trainees had been posted to, to apply the same laws and
treatments accorded permanent staff to the NaBCO Trainees, reminding them that
“It is the same taxes collected from all Ghanaians that is being used to pay
their stipends”.
On monitoring issues, he disclosed that
apart from the monthly attendance form that trainees were supposed to filled,
which must be endorsed by their supervisors, the NABCO Coordinators
periodically visit the various institutions for monitoring in addition to some
headcounts to ensure that Trainees were not paid for no work done.
Mr Ameyibor said the Tema GNA Office was
ready to collaborate with institutions both governmental and private for the
total development of the country, “the media has a major role to play for the
national cohesion and growth”.
The Tema Regional Manager explained that GNA
was still relevant to the wider national communication system; “we are
therefore opening new business minded window of media practice to ensure that
we feed the nation with truthful, balance and accurate news in the midst of
social media invasion of the traditional news space”.
Mr Ameyibor noted that GNA will continue to
play its role as a dynamic strategy state actor, to harness the information arm
of the state, to build a viable and united nation-state.
Touching on the issue of the NaBCO Trainees,
Mr Ameyibor urged the trainees to consider the Government initiative as a huge
opportunity to prepare them for the job market.
“Government through the initiative has
opened a major door to the beneficiaries. Consider it as a three-year capacity
training programme to improve your status.
“You are a worker and must integrate into
the operational environment you are posted to, you must justify the investment,
and work efficiently, whilst adhering to rules and regulations of the
institution”.
He also appealed to institutions using NaBCO
Trainees to develop on the job training programme, which would help them
integrate smoothly and quickly into the new working environment for mutual
benefit.
He called for checks and balances to ensure
that they did not take the stipends, while sneaking in and out of the companies
they have been attached to.
On the need for collaboration between the
two agencies, he said GNA and NABCO were both public institutions that work for
the interest of the state, therefore “it is our mandate to project every
Government initiative to accelerate national development.
“As a news agency we cannot sit on the
fence, we are an integral part of every government’s communication strategy and
serving as a link between the government and people”.
Mr Ameyebor stated that there was the need
for government establishments to take advantage of state media institutions to
project their good works instead of waiting for their occasional seemingly
negative acts to hit the front pages before they rush to undertake damage
control.
GNA