A Youth Service Bill and Sports Development Bill are expected to be laid in Parliament at the start of the next sitting, geared towards giving legal backing to the National Youth Policy and other youth and sports related policies.
Major (Rtd) Dr. Mustapha Ahmed, Minister of Youth and Sports, said this at a Youth and Governance Dialogue organized by the Youth Bridge Foundation in Accra.
The event was on the theme: “Youth Development in Ghana: Dialogue on Proposals to decouple the Ministry of Youth and Sports.”
He said the Bills, which were presented to Cabinet two weeks ago, had received the necessary attention of the sub-committee to which it was referred and was expected to receive the ‘no objection’ from Cabinet for it to be laid before Parliament.
He said the eventual passage of the bills would give actors in the implementation of the National Youth Policy the legal backing and confidence to undertake their activities to promote youth development.
Dr. Ahmed said the Youth Service Bill also aims primarily at imbibing in the Ghanaian youth a high sense of nationalism, patriotism and voluntarism, which is important for development and the togetherness of the youth from community to the national level.
“I see a lot of excitement that will come when this is passed into law because it will recognize the efforts currently being made by various youth groups towards national development and promote national cohesion by providing a sense of direction’ he said.
Dr. Ahmed said it will also help in the coordination of youth activities in the various ministries and make them more effective as they would be mandated by law to undertake such activities.
On the issue of decoupling the Ministry of Youth and Sports to create a stand-alone ministries for Youth and Sports in order to place more priority on youth related issues, the Minister said the initiatives rolled out by government in the area of youth development such as the launch of the National Youth Policy, the Youth in Agriculture Programme, Local Enterprises and Skills Development Programme (LESDEP), the Youth Enterprise Support with a seed fund of GH¢10,000,000.00 and others, showed government’s priority on youth development.
He said the budget allocation to the Ministry of youth and sports alone did not reflect government financial commitment to the sector as youth development was multi-sectoral with some of the programmes under different ministries such as the ministries of agriculture and education.
“The decoupling of the Youth sector from the sports sector is not the panacea to solving the youth problems in the country” he said, adding that the Ministry was strengthening the inter-ministerial alliance on youth development while ensuring that programmes for the youth were not at variance with the National Youth Policy.
He however commended the YBF for organizing the forum saying the communique issued at the end of the discussion would strengthen the Ministry’s capacity in coordinating, monitoring and evaluating the implementation of the policies on youth and sports.
The Dialogue was a follow-up to recommendations from an earlier forum and based on a YBF’s ‘assessment of frontiers for youth engagement and the five-year trend analysis of the national budget between the period 2011 to 2015.
There is in existence only 72 District Youth Authority offices in the 216 districts, and an average of 0.65 per cent national budgetary allocation for the period 2011 and 2015 to the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
Of this amount, a staggering 70 per cent of the allocation is expensed on sports, mostly football whiles other competing alternatives have limited resources.
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Source: GNA