President William Ruto says the National Youth Service will play a critical role in his government’s agenda in line with the bottom up economic transformation plan.
Speaking in Gilgil during the 87th pass out parade for the 10,521 graduates from the National Youth Service, the president said his administration plan to invest in a future that will exploit the potential of young people in national development.
He said the government has put in place elaborate measures to equip young people with skills and capabilities that are not only competitive in the current global market but also firmly aligned with imperatives of the radical transformation of the country’s economy.
“We have set out strategic interventions in the bottom up economic transformation agenda in order to significantly enhance the productivity of labor across five priority sectors, create million of jobs for young people over the next ten years, provide necessary infrastructure and support for them to engage in innovation and creation as well as forms of employment in the digital economy.” Said the president.
He reveled that the government has embarked on a strategic re-engineering of NYS to enhance the capacity of the institution to take a greater number of trainees to position it in the path of financial sustainability through revenue generation thereby creating the condition to support the expansion of enrolment of 100,000 young people annually in the next five years.
“ This year we are graduating 10,000 young people. Next year, in the first cohort, it will be 15,000. In the next cohort in August, it will be 15,000. So next year, 30,000 young people will graduate from NYS as we position NYS as the incubator for all other arms of government,’ he announced.
He said the National Security Council has already endorsed a plan that will see 80 percent of those to be recruited in the police service, KDF, KWS and the Kenya forest service derived from NYS.
And as the country engage several countries with the intention of exporting labour, Ruto said NYS will be the central organization for pre-deployment and training of Kenyans seeking to work outside the country.
“Already, we are concluding negotiations with Germany and Saudi Arabia as well as eight other countries on export of labor. NYS is going to be the central organization for pre-deployment and training so that Kenyans understand what they need to do when they go for work outside the country.” Said the President.
Besides having salaries for NYS staff increased by 40 percent over the next three financial years, the president said he has approved the modernization and re-engineering of NYS that will see an additional 200 cadets trained to enhance the capacity of NYS to train more servicemen and women while 500 servicemen will be trained to join the staff at NYS.
“We will use NYS to grow the pool of young people that are job ready to take up responsibilities in different sectors,” he said.
The National Youth Service (NYS) is a state corporation established by the NYS Act, of 2018 mandated to transform, develop skills and empower Kenyan youth to develop disciplined, hardworking and patriotic citizens through Paramilitary Training, National Service as well as Technical and Vocational Education and Training programmes for national development.