Mr. Speaker, my hon. Friend knows the true position. The true position is that the young people have been employed by the Ministry under the National Youth Employment Programme under the Waste and Sanitation Module. All Zoomlion is doing is offering management services.
Mr. Speaker, like I said, the young people are being trained. Now, they have added city beautification. So the young people are being trained in gardening, horticulture and painting. Aside that, when you go to the workshop, the young people are being trained on how to put together the machines that they use. But beyond that, we at the Ministry are discussing with Zoomlion a mechanism that would allow these young people to move beyond waste and sanitation.
So we are discussing the possibility of employees in the module, after a certain length of service, being given some amount so that they can go and better their grades or learn a trade or learn a vocation. These are all things that are coming on stream as we go into this year.
Mr. Speaker, we do not have a lot of time but let me comment briefly on the contribution made by my good Friend, hon. Haruna Iddrisu. On this business about people being owed six months salaries or allowances under the National Youth Employment Programme, let me take this opportunity to set the records straight.
Mr. Speaker, the funding arrangement of the programme was approved by this House and in the operationalisation of that
funding arrangement, there is a difficulty. The funding arrangement provides that 10 per cent of the GETFund, 10 per cent of the NHIS, 15 per cent of the DACF and 5 per cent of Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Fund should be ceded to the NYEP. These Funds are statutory funds.
They have their own regular schedules of disbursement. Disbursement from the Central Treasury into these Funds is done on a quarterly basis. So GETFund gets its disbursement on a quarterly basis; the District Assemblies Common Fund get its disbursement on a quarterly basis; same as NHIS, same as HIPC. So they also make their disbursement into the NYEP on a quarterly basis. Because we use our transfers to pay salaries, there are always in-built arrears of three months on our transfers to pay salaries. That is the basic situation and that has been occasioned by the funding arrangement. Because the disbursements take place every three (3) months, we have in-built arrears position of three months.
Sometimes when the disbursements from the sources delay, the arrears position goes into four months and so on. But you have cases where people claim their arrears for six months and nine months.
Mr. Speaker, what happens is that you have enlistment into the programme being done at the district level by District Chief Executives. Out of a certain exigency, they employ people in the teaching modules, in the nursing modules and so on without reference to the head office.
So you are presented with a fait accompli, four, five months down the line when people have been employed without your knowledge at head office
and the people have already been working for three, four months. And so you find out that people have been employed, they have been engaged and working for five months, six months, but they do not register them at head office; they are not registered on the payroll, and then you have to go back and regularize these.
This is the primary reason why you have people who have not been paid for six months, seven months and eight months. And I have a long list of such cases - letters in my office of employment done by DCEs and all kinds of local actors at the district level. This is one of the main reasons why we have this long overlap of arrears running into nine months and so on. But essentially, the funding arrangement that was approved by this House, which provides funding to the programme on a quarterly basis means that the programme can only start paying salaries quarterly. And if that formula arrangement is changed, I am sure the programme can be more timely in the payment of salaries.
We are discussing with the Minister for Finance and Economic Planning and we are discussing with other banking institutions to see if some advance can be made to us so that we can pay more timely if the funding arrangement cannot be changed.
Mr. Speaker, lastly, this business about the talk time tax and the comments made by my hon. Friend - I will urge this House to support the talk time tax when it comes because the talk time tax will not be an unnecessary burden on mobile phone users. Mr. Speaker, historically, the cost of airtime falls; it does not rise. As we speak, a minute of airtime is 1,400 old cedis. A minute of airtime is 1,400 old cedis - [Interruption] -
