The National Service Secretariat is calling for calm as agitation among 2023/2024 service personnel grows following the Secretariat’s inability to pay their monthly allowances.
The NSS personnel who began their service in November 2023 are yet to receive a penny from the government.
Speaking to Citi News, the Acting Head of Corporate Affairs for the National Service Scheme, Ambrose Entsiwah Junior, indicated that the Secretariat is waiting on Parliament for the approval of their budget.
He said, “It depends on the money that we receive at any point in time. Let’s not forget that we have submitted our budget to parliament like every other institution for appropriation to be done. And so once those things have been completed and funds have been released into our account, which includes salaries and payment of allowances and all that, we will pay the service personnel.”
Ambrose Entsiwah Junior also asserted that there is a need “to ensure that the new metric app that has been introduced to weed out ‘unscrupulous people’ who might find their way into the system. All these things will take a little while to be sure that we have gotten exactly those who qualified to do national service and are at post working before we can do the payment of their allowances.”
Additionally, Ambrose Entsiwah Junior also attributed the situation to the reposting of personnel.
“People are requesting for reposting and it is difficult to pay them now. If someone has requested for reposting, under which category are you paying the person? Is it under-subvented, non-subvented, in a school, in a particular town or village, and all that so usually, we want to complete all these processes before we make payment” he added.
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