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Rampaging youth under the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) within the Tamale Metropolis have again unleashed their venom on officials of the programme for the non-payment of allowances due them. They claimed their allowances had been in arrears for over a year yet officials of the programme seemed oblivious of their plight, reasons for which they stormed the regional secretariat to demand for their monies. The employees, 100 in number and mostly teachers, met the office under lock and key and as a result broke a number of fluorescent tubes and a basin used for washing hands. According to them, they had visited the office to beat the Regional Coordinator of the Programme, Mohammed Amin Adam-Abio, who they claimed had refused to pay them. Dissatisfied with the action taken at the premises of the NYEP, the group marched to the offices of LESDEP, operated by Zoomlion and tried confiscating a number of motorbikes but for the swift response of the police. The teachers are said to be paid under the Better Ghana Management Services also being operated by Zoomlion. When contacted, Mohammed Amin Adam-Abio described the action of the youth as uncalled for, noting that they were well aware of measures his outfit had put in place to have them paid. According to him, he was currently not in the region due to pressure he had mounted on his superiors to release funds for the payment of beneficiaries, and wondered why they went ahead to embark on such an action. He promised that all employees under the programme would receive their outstanding allowances before the end of the week, hinting that those identified to have engaged in the destruction would be dealt with accordingly. �LESDEP is not a department under NYEP. Why must they go there to cause trouble?� he asked. He told DAILY GUIDE that a directive had been given to the police to arrest and prosecute any individual who took a motorbike from LESDEP as such actions constituted thievery. A stand-off between officials and aggrieved beneficiaries of the NYEP in the Northern Region has been ongoing since the programme was introduced a couple of years ago. Beneficiaries claim government�s failure to pay them for several months had rendered them hopeless among their peers and families. The group is therefore threatening to make things unbearable for government if it did not heed their concerns and respond immediately. They indicated that Tuesday�s action formed part of a series of planned demonstrations to register their disappointment since it was the only language government understood. The programme, which was initiated by the erstwhile Kufuor administration about four years ago, has been dogged by many problems since its inception. The personnel are currently expressing their disappointment at the government for what they said were recurrent delays in paying their salary arrears. The aggrieved workers said even though they were being paid a pittance, the government still owed them three months� salary arrears, thus compelling them to depend on their parents and family members.