A ‘Flair Portal’ has been introduced by the National Service Scheme (NSS) as its new vision to move away from the previous mandate of deploying NSS personnel.
This was disclosed by the Executive Director of the NSS, Mr Osei Assibey Antwi, last Friday in Accra during a user agency stakeholder meeting on the Flair Portal under the theme “Partnership for Efficient Service Delivery.”
Flair Portal is an online employability platform which offers user agencies the opportunity to make requests for graduates with specific skills or training to undertake national service at their end.
Again, the portal offers stakeholders the opportunity to benefit from skill-matching information, including a course of study or profession while serving as database on information on national service personnel and user agencies.
Mr Antwi said the NSS had decided to work diligently with user agencies and other partners to ensure that the one year period for the national service was used carefully to provide top-up training for graduates.
Explaining that the shift in paradigm from purely deploying personnel for a year to an agency that offered permanent employment opportunitieswas necessary due to the increase in unemployment rate.
“The new move is aimed at repositioning the scheme to retain some of its personnel after their service and also ensure that those who would travel would be capable and ready to create their own companies,” he said.
Mr Antwi, however, cited that some of the modules designed by NSS to associate service personnel into global entrepreneurs included the NSS-Ghana Tourism Authority Support programme, Construction of real estate and public facilities, Agriculture and the NSS-Techlab partnership to design computer application systems.
“Already, workshops have been organised for all tertiary educational institutions across the country on the new vision and platform,” he said.
For his part, the Deputy Minister of Education, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, said turnaround time was important for the private sector and for that the National Service Secretariat’s introduction of such a portal was commendable.
“NSS had moved a step ahead as an effective public sector agency to provide the private sector the required support, so that they would be in a better stead to ensure stronger collaboration that would address their needs while reducing unemployment,” he stated.
BY ANITA ANKRAH
