The Member of Parliament for Effutu Constituency, Alex Afenyo-Markin is admonishing government to ensure fairness and utmost transparency in the selection of persons who will benefit from the GHC 10 million youth fund.
The President launched the Youth Enterprise Support (YES) fund to assist young entrepreneurs with bright but struggling businesses with capital to run their business.
Many Ghanaians fear the initiative will suffer the same mismangement that collapsed the Ghana Youth Employment and Entrepreneurial Development Agency (GYEEDA) and the Savannah Accelerated Development Authority (SADA).
Some members of the GYEEDA and SADA management teams and individuals who benefited from contracts are currently in court or under investigation.
Speaking on Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana show, Mr. Afenyo-Markin commended the President for setting up the fund for the youth.
He however cautioned government against favouring party members to the neglect of qualified applicants.
The Effutu MP said valuable lessons must be learnt from past experiences which stalled youth development.
“My question is, what lessons did we learn from our past failures and have we incorporated that into this module such that people will have the attitude of paying back?”
He advised the youth not to view the support they will get from the fund as give-aways because that mindset will hinder the prompt payment of funds received.
According to him, the current economic crisis is partly due to the fact that “government invested so much and they’ve not had the needed returns and these monies that were invested were funds that were borrowed and government is paying at a cost.”
Afenyo-Markin lamented the possibility of the fund being used to gain political points from citizens since the 2016 general elections are just two years away.
This, he said is going to be at a great cost to the nation, and therefore called for “proper orientation” and “utmost transparency that people are carefully selected.”
By: Efua Idan Osam/citifmonline.com/Ghana
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