By Kebba AF Touray
The National Youth Service Scheme has embarked on a nationwide stakeholder engagement tour to meet with regional authorities from the Area Councils and the Governors’ Offices.
The tour which wrapped up recently, is meant to remind the councils of their 10% budget counterpart contributions to the Scheme as per the NYSS Act in supporting the programmes that seek to empower young people with livelihood skills.
The delegation from NYSS, led by the Executive Director, Abass Bah, also met with all the sponsored corps members and their master craft persons in the regions and completed their stipends and contract payments.
Mustapha Badjie, the Deputy Executive Director of NYSS, said most of the councils were not forthcoming with the payment of their counterpart contribution. He stated that the main part of the tour was to remind them of the payment and its importance to the scheme and young people.
“The only council that is fully compliant is the Janjanbureh Area Council because they have been honouring their counterpart contribution since. These contributions greatly enhance and help NYSS to recruit more young people into the livelihood skills development programmes and sustain the programme,” he said.
He said they also informed the councils of NYSS’s planned graduation for the current batches on the Apprenticeship Training Programme (ATP) and main skill training programme following the completion of their two-year skills training programmes.
Mr Badjie said ATP targets out-of-school young people, madrasa students and other young people without any educational background.
“These groups of young people need to be supported if not majority of them will become liabilities to society. Giving them livelihood skills will help them become an asset to their families and society as a whole,” he said.
He explained that the main skill training programme targets young people from grade 9 and above. He said NYSS recruits them and later sends them to skills training schools like GTTI and other formal skills training institutions across the country.
“We also have a graduate program that we launched sometime this year targeting young graduates from the University of The Gambia. Our programmes covered all categories of young people, from out-of-school youth to the ones who stop at grade 9 to 12 and the ones who completed university education,” he said.
“In all these programmes, the Area Councils are our key partners and that is why as part of our annual plan, we visited councils to engage them and strengthen our partnership and remind them of their obligation,” he said.
He added: “If you want to empower young people, we should give them something that can serve them for their entire life span. The best way to curb migration is giving the young people livelihood skills.”
The Executive Director also acknowledged the great support provided by the Gambia government through the Ministry of Youth and Sports in the overall funding of the programme, which is geared towards promoting and enhancing skills acquisition and employment creation for Gambian Youth.
He said NYSS hopes that with an increase in funding from the government complimented by the Area Councils and other development agencies, more youth will be recruited into the NYSS programmes.
“These programs are key strategies in reducing youth unemployment and increasing skills acquisition, which can greatly help in the reduction of irregular migration and its associated dangers,” he said.
