Chief Executive Officer of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA), Malik Basintale, has announced that beneficiaries of the agency’s sanitation module will soon receive more than a 300 percent increase in their allowances under a new waste management agreement.
Mr. Basintale explained that the decision comes after the suspension of YEA’s contract with Zoomlion Ghana Limited, which had been paying beneficiaries GH¢258 monthly—an amount widely criticized as woefully inadequate.
“When I took office, I swore by my late grandfather’s grave that no contract would be signed to pay GH¢258.
“That figure is unacceptable in this modern era. In any future contract, we will not go below the minimum wage. We are looking at more than a 300 per cent increase,” he stressed while speaking to journalists after appearing before the Public Accounts Committee on Friday, August 22, 2025.
Mr. Basintale also addressed concerns raised during the audit process regarding ghost names in the system. “We have not discovered ghost names; what we found are absent individuals. Those at post have been validated, but those absent will lose two months’ pay,” he clarified.
He further assured that payments to validated workers were already being disbursed. “Beneficiaries who were validated can attest that their allowances have already been credited to their accounts,” he added.
