The National Coordinator of the National Youth Employment Programme is blaming “funny faulty funding arrangement” put in place by the Kufuor government for the difficulties associated with the implementation of the programme. Employees under the scheme have consistently complained of delayed and sometimes unpaid allowances since the introduction of the programme. The programme recruits unemployed youth to perform different tasks under different modules and are expected to be paid monthly allowances after performing their tasks. However, the President John Kufuor-led New Patriotic Party government under whose auspices the programme was initiated failed to promptly pay the employees. Several funding arrangements have failed to arrest the challenge of delayed payments of allowances which in some cases have led to threats of demonstrations. The problem still persists under the John Mills-led National Democratic Congress administration which inherited the programme and introduced new modules. These have led to several criticisms by labour experts some of who have questioned the sustainability of the programme. Coordinator of the Programme Abuga Pele told Joy News’ Kweku Obeng Adjei the programme is wobbly because of the funny funding arrangements put in place by the previous administration. “If there is a new funding arrangement put in place; if there is a legal framework put in place all these problems that we are seeing will not take place,” he said. He said even the talk time tax introduced by the NPP to cater for the funding of the programme has not addressed the issue because the percentage to be used to fund the programme is not legally binding. “When the talk time tax was passed in Parliament it was stipulated that it will be used mainly for the funding of NYEP. If they had for instance given 70, 60 or 80 per cent of that amount to the NYEP we won’t have the problems we have today. So there was a funny arrangement which was put in place that was faulty and we have continued to suffer from that faulty funny arrangement.” He said government has secured cabinet approval for 60 per cent of the talk time tax to resolve the problem. Story by Nathan Gadugah Myjoyonline.com/Ghana