The National Service Authority (NSA) has held a pre-launch media briefing aimed at demystifying misconceptions surrounding national service and its operations and promoting purposeful engagement with the public.
The event came ahead of the official launch of the NSA, formerly known as the National Service Scheme (NSS), as part of its transformation into an authority.
Speaking at the session, the Director General of NSA, Osei Assibey Antwi, emphasised the critical role of the media in ensuring accurate reporting. He urged media practitioners to familiarise themselves with the authority’s activities to avoid the spread of misinformation and malice.
According to him, the NSA is focused on transparency, and accurate media reporting is essential to building public trust.
“The media plays a critical role in information dissemination. As such, your action or inaction can put the authority in a bad light. I urge you all media practitioners to exercise circumspection in your reportage on issues relating to the operations of the Authority,” he stated.
The Head of Deployment at the NSA, Abraham Bismark Gaisie, provided a detailed presentation on how the deployment of service personnel is carried out.
He introduced the media to the Authority’s Metric App, a key tool used to detect and prevent fraud. This system, according to him, plays a pivotal role in identifying individuals attempting to manipulate the system for financial gain, particularly those trying to receive payments for work they haven’t done.
Abraham Gaisie stressed the success of the app in eliminating ghost names from the payroll, which has resulted in savings of over GHC 250 million for the government.
“It is crucial to note that the Metric App had successfully enabled the elimination of ghost names from the government payroll, which hitherto could have gone to the pockets of scam syndicates who may try to beat the system,” he recalled.
For her part, the Deputy Director of General Service at the NSA, Gifty Oware-Mensah, addressed concerns about protocol postings, a topic often linked to the Authority in media reports.
The NSA official clarified that the National Service Authority does not engage in any form of protocol postings, describing such claims as misinformation.
She explained that certain organisations occasionally submit specific lists of graduates they would like to engage as service personnel, but this is not the same as protocol postings.
According to her, these requests are processed according to standard procedures, and the NSA remains committed to fair and transparent deployment.
“The authority doesn’t initiate any special postings as against the media reports on it on the various social media platforms. Often than not, some organisations would want specific backgrounds of graduates for their outfit. So, they write to us to that effect, and we as an institution equally post those graduates with the specified backgrounds. Would it be fair to say that the authority engages in protocol postings given this very scenario?” she quizzed.