The Executive Director of Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA), Sulemana Braimah, has questioned the National Service Scheme (NSS) for charging students GHC40 for account activation.
According to him, the Scheme stands to benefit about GHC5.3 million from the 2024 batch of students who are yet to start their mandatory national service.
Mr Braimah called for immediate action, saying that the Scheme must be stopped from charging those fees.
The Scheme in a statement issued on Wednesday, June 19, released PIN codes for a total of 133,476 personnel for the 2024–2025 service year.
NSS said, “Prospective service personnel would then be required to proceed to any ADB Bank Ltd. branch with their PIN Codes and pay GHe40.00, or may opt to use the MTN MoMo service to make a payment of GHe41.00 to activate the enrolment process.”
It added that “registration opens today, Wednesday, June 19, 2024, and will close on Friday, July 19, 2024.”
The management of NSS further urged all prospective national service personnel to complete the enrolment process carefully to prevent any errors that could “negatively impact the deployment exercise.”
But Mr Braimah, reacting to the statement in a post on X on Wednesday, said, “Why should students who will be offering service to the nation be made to pay to activate their enrollment?”.
“Just so that NSS will make a cool GHC5.3 million without sweat? I mean why? No this must be stopped immediately,” he stated.
https://twitter.com/sulemana/status/1803438277090799663
Moreover, Mr Braimah appealed to the flagbearer and leader of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia, to ensure the NSS enrollment is made free for the students.
“Dear Dr. @MBawumia, I know you’re not the President. But as Vice Prez and leader of the NPP, there’re certain decisions you can make. I’m appealing to you to order NSS to immediately reverse this plan to extort over GHC5.3 million from students. NSS enrollment should be made free,” he wrote on X.
Below is the statement from NSS:
