Plans are afoot for the National Service Scheme (NSS) to upgrade Internet service to allow prospective national service persons to know their places of posting online, beginning from the 2017/2018 service year.

The Deputy Director of the scheme in charge of Operations, Mr Henry Nana Boakye, who announced this, said it was aimed at reducing the stress prospective service personnel went through before they knew their places of posting.

According to him, in order to achieve that novelty, the NSS was building ties with the telecommunication companies to build special codes for prospective service persons.

Special code

He explained  that the special codes would be given to each registered prospective service person, so that by texting to that special code, places where he or she would be posted to would be made available.

Speaking at a mini congress of the National Service Personnel Association (NASPA) in Kumasi, he said the novelty was part of the scheme's innovations in its operations.

Nana Boakye noted that most often Internet connections were jammed, and that  prospective service persons found it difficult to know the regions and places they had been posted.

The novelty, he added, would also make it easy for prospective service persons in the rural areas to know their places of posting.

Life Starter Policy

The deputy director disclosed that the NSS management would soon roll out a new policy called 'Life Starter Policy'.

He noted that national service persons were about starting a new life all by themselves and that the scheme was looking at giving them television and radio sets, mattresses, among others, to enable them to begin life more comfortably.

He said the NSS was also partnering the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants (ACCA) to render training and open entrepreneurship centers for national service persons.

He said most service persons who had received training would be linked to the Youth Enterprises Support (YES) and the Youth Employment Agency (YEA).

Insurance policy

Nana Boakye noted that service persons who were posted to big companies mostly did "all the dirty work" and so it would be necessary for such service persons to benefit from the insurance policy of the scheme.

The insurance policy, he said, was also part of the novelty that the NSS sought to bring to national service circles to make the service attractive.

The Deputy Ashanti Regional Co-ordinator of the NSS, Mr Francis Dwira Darko, who represented the Ashanti Regional Minister, Mr Simon Osei-Mensah, said a mini congress of the NASPA brought about nostalgic feelings among the grey hairs at the helm of affairs in governance .

He said the Planting for Food and Jobs policy was a flagship programme of the government to increase food production and ensure food security.

He, therefore deemed the involvement of service personnel (the youth) as a good advocacy, saying it sent a good message to the country, the rest of Africa and the world.

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