Daily Heritage June 16

Quake Edition FEB 92.qxp_Layout 1 6/15/17 9:38 PM Page 7
15TH
JUNE 2017
THURSDAY
CURRENCY PARIS CODE BUYING SELLING
US Dollar USDGHS 4.3373 4.3417
RATES Pound Sterling GBPGHS
5.5322
5.5391
Euro
GBPGHS
4.8384
4.8432
10
DAILY HERITAGE FRIDAY, JUNE 16, 2017 WWW.DAILYHERITAGE.COM.GH
GH¢50m fraud: Publish YEA report
• Minority to YEA management
THE MINORITY in
Parliament has challenged
management
of the Youth Employment
Agency
(YEA) to publish the
report alleging fraud in the scheme.
The YEA had earlier confirmed
that it had deleted 16,839 names
from its payroll.
The Agency said it took the decision
after its internal audit
showed that thousands of beneficiaries
of YEA were being fraudulently
paid.
The agency stated that the rot
amounted to over GH¢50 million.
According to the Acting Chief
Executive of the YEA, Justine
Kodua Frimpong, it initiated investigations
into the payroll of YEA
after it noticed some discrepancies
in the report handed to it by the
managers under the previous administration.
But in a press briefing addressed
on Thursday by the minority
spokesperson on Youth, Sports
and Culture, Kobla Woyome, the
minority accused the government
of witch hunting, vilification and
intimidation.
According to them, the computerized
system put in place by
the previous management cannot
be manipulated for fraudulent activities,
hence the allegation by the
new management that the fraud
occurred under the erstwhile government
is questionable.
The minority added that for the
avoidance of doubt each of the
beneficiaries of YEA is biometrically
registered, which makes it
easy to identify them.
“We are challenging the leadership
to produce the names, E-
zwich numbers, modules, youth
employment numbers, regions and
districts for the said ghost names
for the public to check if beneficiaries
cannot be traced to the four
cycles of the YEA.
The minority are further challenging
management to publish the
said audit report of the internal
audit agency it keeps referring to,
together with the written responses
of staff members who were cited
or implicated in the report.
“We are challenging
the leadership to
produce the names,
E-zwich numbers,
modules, youth employment
numbers,
regions and districts
for the said ghost
names for the public
to check if beneficiaries
cannot be
traced to the four
cycles of the YEA.”
Vodafone’s Instant Schools to provide free education
VODAFONE HAS announced
that estimated five million children
are expected to benefit from
Vodafone’s ‘Instant Schools’ project,
an online educational platform
which addresses the perennial
problem of inadequate teaching
materials, textbooks and other assessment
information in many
schools in Africa.
Vodafone, through its Group
Foundation, announced yesterday
that the project, launched earlier
this year, is currently active in five
countries in the sub-region, including
Ghana, Tanzania, Mozambique
and DR Congo, and is
already making an impact.
Andrew Dunnett, Vodafone
Foundation Director, said: “From
refugee camps to remote parts of
Africa with few schools, connectivity
gives children the opportunity
for a better future. Instant
Schools for Africa has the potential
to transform the lives of millions
of children excluded from
education, giving them free access
to the same materials used by children
in developed markets to help
them achieve their ambitions.”
He added that developed in
conjunction with Learning Equality,
a not-for-profit provider of
open-source education, Instant
Schools offers global and local educational
resources, including subjects
such as Maths and Science,
providing millions of children and
young people with access to education
materials, from primary
through to advance high school
level at no charge to Vodafone
users.
Mr Dunnett explained that sub-
Saharan Africa has the lowest rate
of primary school enrolment globally,
with 34 million of the 57 million
out-of-school primary age
children living in the region.
•Vodafone staff supervising some pupils on the online educational platform
“Cultural norms and remote
communities have resulted in outof-school
rates for primary and
secondary school being significantly
higher for girls in sub-Saharan
Africa. According to UN-
ESCO UIS, 15 million girls of
primary school age will never get
the chance to learn to read or
write in primary school compared
with 10 million boys.
Nine million of these girls live
in sub-Saharan Africa. In this
region, the under-five mortality
rate is nearly twice as high
for mothers with no education
as for those who have
completed secondary school,”
he pointed out.
The announcement comes
as the Vodafone Foundation
has published its Connected
Education report, which
found that the online educational
resources made available
through the Instant
Schools For Africa programme
could benefit more
than 50 million children
across Africa, India and Egypt by
2025, as the Vodafone Foundation
increases its focus on these activities.