The Executive Director of the National Service Scheme (NSS), Osei Assibey Antwi, has blamed service personnel under the scheme for the delays that are often seen in the payment of their allowances.
According to him, the youth of today are not time-conscious and do not submit the needed documents in time so that allowances can be processed by the scheme without any delay.
Assibey Antwi, who made these remarks when he appeared before the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament (PAC), on February 15, 2024, added that because of the huge number of national service personnel, the processing of their stipends becomes difficult when a lot of their documentations are not submitted in time.
“Mr Chairman, first of all, National Service, we’re widespread in number and to be able to ensure value for money, we actually have to go through a lot of extraneous validation process.
“…. The youth of today are not like us when we were doing our national service, we were taking to time, and if they have to submit by 15th, they do so. Mr Chairman, it would actually surprise you to know that we are now in February but a large number of them even have not been able to submit their appointment letters… that is the youth that we are working with now,” he said.
He added, “So, always we have to be on them and the way the system is structured if you don’t get more than 70%, 80% to submit and then you decide to submit in pieces, it becomes difficult because first it has to go through the auditors, the auditors would go through the controller, so the processes are long.”
The NSS boss said that the scheme is working with the National Service Personnel Association (NASPA) to ensure that service personnel submit their documents early to avoid any delay in allowances for the 2024 batch of NSS personnel.
“So, we are now speaking to NASPA to speak to their peers so that this batch we have a different story altogether,” he added.
Watch his remarks below:
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