The National Service Secretariat has disclosed intentions of transforming the Secretariat into an authority.
The NSS has been the platform for creating policies and structures for the one-year mandatory national service of graduates from various tertiary institutions.
In an interaction with stakeholders at the Ministry of Information during an assessment of state agencies, Executive Director of the NSS, Osei Assibey-Antwi disclosed that, steps are in place to draft a bill to transform the scheme into an authority.
The move, he said, will alleviate the challenges the scheme is facing currently, adding the NSS will be able to support itself without relying so much on the central government.
“We have worked on all the documents to transition us to become an authority because without becoming an authority, there are a lot of things we can’t do. We want to position ourselves in such a way that we should not always be relying on the central government.
“The work that we want to do, we need a lot of powers to support us to be able to do it, so if we are an authority, there are a lot that we can do, if we are an authority, we can form a joint venture with companies,” Assibey-Antwi said.
Ghanaian students who graduate from accredited tertiary institutions are required under the law to do a one-year national service.
NSS is a government agency mandated to formulate policies and structures for national service.
NSS personnel are given monthly allowances.
