The National Service Personnel Association (NASPA), Ghana has launched its 12th Annual Terminal Congress in Takoradi, under the theme, “Enhancing the Welfare of the NSP for Economic Revitalization and National Development”.

Speaking at the event, the Executive Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS), Mr Osei Assibey Antwi indicated that as part of efforts to reduce the unemployment rate in Ghana, the Scheme has decided to move from deployment to employment for its personnel.

He said the move by the Scheme was to become a real community force to support the government when it comes to employment in the country.

The Executive Director indicated that the scheme had the responsibility of making sure that the person that passed through their corridor were recruited and making sure they improved their skills to make them employable.

Mr Antwi announced that the National Service Secretariat has put in place measures to create a perfect path for the person by looking at what they studied at their various institutions before deploying them according to the knowledge acquired from the tertiary institutions.

“One area that we are also focusing more on to be able to create a lot of employment opportunities for our youth is the area of teaching. In time past, we were posting the personnel to the field of teaching without any pedagogic training”, he stated.

However, he said, “there have been some discussions with educational heads including the Ghana Education Service (GES), and the Minister of Education among others to make sure that they find a way of training the service personnel with pedagogic training skills so that they go into the classroom well-resourced since they will be given a provisional certificate that will empower them to go into the classroom.”

Mr Antwi hinted that the Scheme has concluded that the Secretariat would make it possible for the personnel to have distance learning in education while they were doing their national service so that by the time they are done with their service, they would be holding a Graduate Diploma in Teaching.

He noted that this would position the personnel to get the opportunity to become professional teachers, either in Ghana or to go elsewhere.

Meanwhile, he added that the Scheme using the national surveys and with the opportunities available has come to the realization that it would be possible for them to go into the housing industry where the service personnel have built offices for directors of the Scheme.

Mr Antwi said the Scheme would also look strategically at the area of farming since they have 4000 professionals who have knowledge in farming this year for postings, adding that they were not going to do small-scale farms but targeting about 20,000 acres of land.

He pointed out that they would post the 4000 professionals to the National Service Secretariat where they would work on the farms to have practical knowledge of what they have learned in their respective schools.

The Executive Director said the Scheme would also create an enabling environment for the personnel to get jobs to do after exiting the Scheme.