About 77,962 National Service Personnel have been deployed across the country in all sectors for the 2019/2020 service year.
Out of the number, 66,348, representing 85.1 per cent of the total postings have been deployed to the public sector while the private sector received 11,614 personnel representing 14.9 per cent of the total figure.
Consequently, a total of 6,000 were deployed to support the Agricultural sector including the Planting for Food and Job (PFJ) Policy.
At a press briefing to announce the postings in Accra yesterday, the Executive Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS), Mr Mustapha Ussif said 2,000 personnel were also posted to support NSS’s newly introduced poultry entrepreneurship programme which focused on all the value chain in poultry production.
Postings registrations, he said, would commence at all regional centres across the country from Monday, July 22 to Friday, August 20.
He mentioned that the period was provided to ensure service personnel had sufficient time to go through the registration processes before formally beginning their service on September 2.
According to Mr Ussif, all service personnel were required to provide their student’s identification cards (ID) and any valid national ID card to avoid impersonation or “attempts by unscrupulous persons to compromise the process”.
The Executive Director, however, noted that the personnel were required to book an appointment on the scheme’s website before reporting to the premises of the designated registration centres to register, adding that personnel who showed up at the registration centres without appointment letters would be turned away.
He revealed that the trend in the regional distribution with regard to requests, choice of regions and deployments had not seen much change as compared to previous years.
“The Greater Accra, Northern and Ashanti regions received very high posting requests while the two upper regions, Upper East and Upper West recorded low requests but we are working to shore up the numbers in these two regions with late registrations and postings in due course,” he added.
Mr Ussif advised the service personnel to stay away from people who might approach them to offer assistance to change their postings, saying such persons should be reported to any officer of the scheme or the law enforcement agencies for the necessary action to be taken against them.
Started in 1973, the National Service programme is a compulsory one-year service required of all citizens of Ghana who are 18 years and above, at the time of deployment to, among other objectives, encourage the spirit of national service among all segments of Ghanaian society.
Under the scheme a person who has not commenced and completed his period of national service would not obtain employment outside the scheme or be employed by any other person outside the Scheme.
BY RAISSA SAMBOU
