By Elsie Appiah-Osei
Accra, July 10, GNA – Parliament has passed the National Service Authority Bill 2024.
The object of the Bill is to establish the National Service Authority to mobilise and post persons qualified to undertake national service in areas of national priority for national development and to promote employability.
The Bill, when assented to by the President of the Republic, would also establish the authority as a corporate body with the requisite legal capacity to develop and implement policies and programmes for national service.
Mr Osei Assibey Antwi, the Executive Director of the National Service Scheme, addressing the Parliamentary Press Corps in Parliament, in Accra, highlighted the potential benefits of the Bill.
According to him, the Bill’s passage would enable the authority to generate funds internally to complement the government’s efforts toward creating employment opportunities for the youth.
He said: “If you have a vibrant youth, if you have a youth that has a future, if you have a youth that knows where they are going, if you have a youth that has the policy to guide them, especially at this time that the current management and the board have now moved into a new direction called deployment for employment. This deployment for employment can only be enhanced with this current backing.
“Now, Parliament has given us autonomy, an authority that is vested with powers in areas where it is going to enhance entrepreneurship.
“With this current status, NSS can work to achieve a lot of internally generated funds to reduce the burden from the central government and we know the President will assent to it to give it the finality, “he said.
GNA