{"id":405629,"date":"2018-03-02T06:15:51","date_gmt":"2018-03-02T06:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=405629"},"modified":"2018-03-03T17:10:54","modified_gmt":"2018-03-03T17:10:54","slug":"nss-boss-justifies-300000-expenditure-for-mit-programme","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=405629","title":{"rendered":"NSS boss justifies $300,000 expenditure for MIT programme"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Executive Director of the National Service Secretariat (NSS), Mustapha Ussif, has rubbished concerns from the MP for Kumbungu, Ras Mubarak, that the secretariat is wasting money by spending $300,000 on a training programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).<\/p>\n<p>Speaking on <strong>Eyewitness News<\/strong>, Mr. Ussif further clarified that the training programme engaged 17 individuals from \u201call youth agencies\u201d as well as persons from academia and corporate Ghana.<\/p>\n<p>The programme involves a series of workshop sessions geared towards exploring solutions towards reducing youth unemployment.<\/p>\n<p>In Parliament on Thursday, Ras Mubarak raised issues with the amount spent on the programme which translates to about GHc 1.3 million.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_395564\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-395564\" style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-395564\" src=\"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Ras-Mubarak-3.jpg\" alt=\"MP for Kumbungu, Ras Mubarak\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Ras-Mubarak-3.jpg 600w, https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/Ras-Mubarak-3-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-395564\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">MP for Kumbungu, Ras Mubarak<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Speaking on <strong>Eyewitness News<\/strong> later on, he said, &#8220;as far as I am concerned, it is completely an outrage to have spent over GHc 1.6 million for 13 officials to travel to the USA for a training programme at a time where the National service Secretariat cant even meet its obligations as far as paying the allowance of service personnel are concerned.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The MP also said there was some policy incoherence because Ghana has &#8220;other agencies of government whose business it is to build the capacity of youth and provide them with training.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Workshops are to tackle unemployment<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mr.\u00a0Ussif, however, defended the move to resort to MIT saying the government was responding to Ghana&#8217;s unemployment problem and it believed the series of workshop&#8217;s at MIT presented a solution.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All this was put together for us to have a two-year intensive workshop to come out with a module that will be feasible for sponsorship from any donor funding\u2026 all these efforts are to reduce the youth unemployment in this country,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n<p>Mr. Ussif maintained further that MIT has &#8220;the potential of helping us with the research and analysis to be able to come out with a feasible module.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He added that these five-day workshops, which sees the 17 persons fly to the US sporadically, are to continue until 2019.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>By: Delali Adogla-Bessa\/citifmonline.com\/Ghana<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Executive Director of the National Service Secretariat (NSS), Mustapha Ussif, has rubbished concerns from the MP for Kumbungu, Ras Mubarak, that the secretariat is wasting money by spending $300,000 on a training programme at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Speaking on Eyewitness News, Mr. Ussif further clarified that the training programme engaged 17 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":405631,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,11],"tags":[3,3791,1758,2698],"class_list":["post-405629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","category-top-stories","tag-ghana-news","tag-mustapha-ussif","tag-national-service-secretariat","tag-ras-mubarak"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=405629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/405631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=405629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=405629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=405629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}