Mr Enoch Teye Mensah, Minister of Employment and Social welfare, on Thursday inaugurated a five-member committee to investigate petitions submitted by aggrieved persons concerning operations of Integrated Community Centres for Employable Skills (ICCES).
ICCES which seeks to offer community-based vocational training to the youth has 65 training centres in more than 50 districts in all the 10
regions, except Upper East.
Mr Mensah said all centres of ICCES were located deep in rural communities with about six of them among the urban poor.
"ICCES also has regional offices in all the regions in which it operates and manned by regional co-ordinators and their secretarial staff," he added.
Mr Mensah said last year was rather a turbulent one for ICCES as the ministry received a lot of petitions concerning poor managerial practices and bad treatment meted out to some aggrieved staff of the centres.
"Last year, we witnessed a particularly high rate of termination of appointments and unsavoury managerial practices among staff of ICCES. The
ministry has therefore deemed it appropriate to institute a full scale investigation into all the issues at hand," he added.
The committee's terms of reference include investigations into the technical and financial administration of ICCES from January 2008 to March 2010 especially with regard to receipts and disbursement of funds from the government.
It would conduct investigations into the human resource management relating to appointment, postings, promotions and pay roll management, investigate grievances procedures to address promotions, transfers and acts of victimisations.
In addition, the committee would investigate any other incident which in its opinion would help reposition ICCES to deliver on its mandate.
It has four weeks to submit its report to the Minister.
Nana Agyekum Dwamena, of the Office of Head of Civil Service is Chairman of the Committee.
He thanked the government for the trust reposed in them and pledged their commitment to come out with appropriate measures to ensure success of ICCES.
Other members of the committee are; Mr Edmund Siaw Akugbey, a Financial Consultant, Mr Frank Quist, Director of Human Resources, Ministry of Employment and Social Welfare, Mr Eric Afriyie, Principal Internal Auditor,
(MESW) and Mr Godwin Kudese, Head of Centres training, National Vocational Training Institute, member/secretary.