The National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) has hailed the government for the interventions proposed in the 2020 Budget Statement and Economic Policy, stressing that it addresses the concerns of Ghanaian youth.According to the Union, portions of the budget that relate to Ghanaian students and the youth, in general, give hope for a fresh start in business.
The YouStart, it said, is of great interest as young entrepreneurs across the various campuses of tertiary institutions are in dire need of a boost to grow their young businesses.
“It focuses to empower youth entrepreneurs and young individuals with business ideas to expand them and start their businesses respectively. A push that we believe would go a long way to reduce the growing unemployment situation in the country.
“We would like to urge the government to judiciously allocate the resources taking into consideration the poor and needy youth who really need this push to develop their imaginative businesses into reality but not a selected few especially on partisan merits”, NUGS stated.
Addressing a news conference yesterday to give support for the 2022 budget, the student body urged Parliament to approve it.
The statement read at the conference was jointly signed by NUGS President Yiadom Boakye Emmanuel, USAG President Christian Armah Philip, GUPS President Stephen Kwasi Acquah, Regional SRC Presentative Osborne Opoku Sarfo, GRASAG F.C Representative Jacob Yeboah Boamah, TTAG President Abdul Manan Dimbie and NAHSAG President Faustina Aikins.
Support for E-levy
The students noted that e-levy is a viable source for raising funds to relieve the country’s debt situation, which has escalated due to COVID-19 hence the decision to raise revenue internally to cater for certain aspects of the economy is a step in the right direction.
NUGS, however, demanded a commitment from the government that the e-levy will be used to tackle the programmes outlined in the budget including the YouStart Initiative, road construction and developing the digital space among several others.
According to the Union, the decision to set up a university endowment as part of YouStart is spot on and novel and added, “We cannot wait for this to be rolled out and for students to benefit from this,” and urged government to fast-track the progress towards initiating the YouStart.
They called on the government to, however, do more stakeholder engagements and public education on the e-levy in order to relieve fears expressed on its impact.
The NUGS leadership also praised the government for the partnership it has set out in the budget with financial institutions to invest GH¢10 billion into youth entrepreneurship to help young people start their businesses.
“This bold intervention will help reduce the issue of unemployment in this country and will ensure that young people after completing their education will get access to funding.
“This for us is one of the biggest interventions we have seen in the fourth republic to address an issue of ultimate importance to the youth unemployment,” they said.
Deprived basic schools
The Union appealed to the government to avert its attention to the many underdeveloped basic schools that have inadequate infrastructure and teaching and learning materials.
They urged the Education Ministry to allocate a budget to address these challenges and concerns at the basic level and to pay the outstanding six months arrears of Teacher Trainees’ across the 46 Public Colleges of Education in the country to help alleviate their hardships.
NUGS also applauded the government for removing all road tolls that had contributed to lots of inconveniences to road users and demanded the affected workers be re-employed as a matter of urgency.
