Minister for Youth Development and Empowerment, George Opare-Addo, has disclosed that the new Board of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA) will officially assume office on Wednesday, May 7, with a mandate to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the agency’s existing programmes.

Speaking in an interview on Channel One TV’s The Point of View with Bernard Avle, the Minister outlined the immediate task he intends to assign to the incoming board: a full-scale review of all programme modules under the agency to determine their relevance and impact.

“The Board will be sworn in on Wednesday, May 7. One of the key things I will tell the board to review immediately is to review all the modules under the YEA to assess the impact, to see how best these programmes have impacted,” Opare-Addo stated.

He clarified that YEA currently does not have a standing contract with Zoomlion Ghana Limited—the waste management company that previously collaborated with the agency under its sanitation initiative.

“Currently there’s no contract with Zoomlion, we’ll assess sanitation module impact so far as to whether to maintain what we still have. But we will open up the tender, so that other people can also tender, which I can guarantee,” he said.

The Minister emphasized the need for a transparent and inclusive process, revealing that upcoming tenders for the sanitation module will be opened on a regional level to broaden participation.

“It will be done on a regional basis so that the tender will be done on all 16 regions,” he added.

Meanwhile, the Parliamentary Committee on Sanitation has expressed its preference for continuity, calling on the government to maintain its longstanding relationship with Zoomlion under the Youth in Sanitation module.

Zoomlion had previously worked in partnership with YEA to deploy young people nationwide for public sanitation duties, under arrangements where YEA handled recruitment while Zoomlion managed operations and logistics.