76 graduates await financial support to set up businesses

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The Minister of Employment and Social Welfare, Mr. Moses Asaga has announced that the newly launched Graduate Business Support Scheme (GEBSS), a public-private sector programme between GEBSS Limited and his ministry had registered 2,500 unemployed graduates across the  10 regions of the country.

According to him, out of the number, 200 had submitted their business plans of which 76 had been updated for funding by financial institutions to set up their businesses.

Mr. Asaga told journalists when he took his turn at the meet-the-press series in Accra. He was quick to add that the scheme, aimed at equipping 10,000 unemployed graduates each year with requisite competencies to enhance their potential for self-employment, entrepreneurship and employability, among others.

The Minister stated that “GEBSS is completing arrangements with the Export Development and Agriculture Investment Fund to access a grant of GHC 400,000 towards premium payments to the Graduate Credit Insurance Guarantee Plan”.

Touching on Single Spine Salary Structure (SSSS), Mr Asaga hinted that the remaining 6,000 public sector workers who are yet to be migrated onto the structure would be rolled on by the close of the year 2012. He noted that over 98 percent of the country’s total work force of public service workers were migrated since the inception of the SSSS.

In his own words: “We have been able to migrate 473, 319 public service workers and civil servants into the single spine salary structure. We are now left with only 1.4% to move unto the single spine, representing some 6000 workers so I believe that we have recorded an ‘A’ double plus under the fair wages commission for single spine”.

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