The Greater Accra Regional Youth Parliament was on Friday inaugurated under the theme “Harnessing Youth Potential for Sustainable Development.”
The youth parliament concept is an initiative by the National Youth Authority (NYA) to provide a single formalised structure at the district, regional and national levels for the youth to deliberate on matters of importance to youth development.
Speaking at the inaugural ceremony, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the NYA, Mr Pius Hadzide, expressed gratitude to the Greater Accra Regional Director of NYA and his team for their hard work in setting up the Greater Accra Regional Youth Parliament.
He said, the Regional Youth Parliaments were being set up across the country by the NYA in fulfilment of its mandate to develop the capacity of the youth to partake in decision-making at all levels as stipulated in Section 3(b) of the NYA Act, 2016 (Act 939).
MrHadzide highlighted that, the GH₵10 billion committedto the YouSTART Initiative represented the boldest attempt by government to address the Youth Employment Challenge.
“The Initiative is to train, finance and support the businesses of youth entrepreneurs to put 1 million young people to work over the next 3 years, the flagship IDIF Policy continues to create employment opportunities for youth and this is indubitably, an Agenda for the Youth,” he harnessed.
He said that, there was the need for a stabalised financial sector to boost the confidence of investors and also for the implementation of the flagship programme of Government to be consistent.
“More jobs must be created and the jobs created must provide a viable means of livelihood to the youth to enable them to live a dignified life,” he said.
The Greater Accra Regional Director for NYA, Mr. Matthias Blay urged government to accumulate more money down for the programmes outlined for the youth such as the national youth volunteer programme and YouSTART, among others, to enable themto be successful entrepreneurs.
The speaker for the Greater Accra Regional Youth Parliament, Anita NhyiraBondzie said that, the platform created would encourage more youth to speak out to government policies and things that affected them directly.
She said that it would also serve as an opportunity for the youth to share their thoughts and contributions to improve the agendas of government.
“Employment is a big challenge for the youth, as a result policies to increase the welfare of the youth were needed while revising educational system to make the youth corporate ready for the market,” she said.
BY ANITA ANKRAH
