By Martha Agas
The Plateau State Coordinator of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) has appealed for the establishment of a skills training centre for its vocational programmes in Jos.
The Coordinator, Ibrahim Abdulazeez made the call on Friday in Jos.
during an interactive session between the Permanent Secetary, Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment, Ms Kachallom Daju and staff of the Directorate in the State.
He said that the establishment of an Agriculture Skills Training Centre(ASTC) in the state would help the agency in its mandate of empowering unemployed Nigerians .
“ASTC will take care of unemployed youths in various skills on the Plateau,” he said .
Abdulazzeez said the state office was implementing many programmes in Plateau through its Vocational Skills Department(VSD), Small Scale Enterprises (SSE), Special Public Works (SPW) and Department of Rural Employment Promotion.
“We have so many programmes on the ground every year in our various departments. In our VSD, we have 340 programmes, under our Advance National Acquisition Skills, we have 170 programmes.
“Under our Basic National Open Apprenticeship Scheme we have 240. We have Graduate Attachment Programmes(GAP) with 50 participants attached to various ministries and department in Plateau.
“Under the environmental beautification training scheme,we have more than 30 participants on training and on our artisan collaboration construction employment scheme, we have more than 50 participants,” he said.
The Coordinator said that NDE needed a bigger office in the State
to enable it to discharge its duties efficiently, thanking Plateau for allocating its current office .
Abdulazeez thanked Daju for the visit saying the action would, encourage more commitment in achieving the organisation’s mandate.
In her remarks, Daju said that the visit was to encourage staff of NDE to work harder in achieving President Muhammadu Buhari’s mandate of reducing poverty in the country and to familiarise with its projects in the state .
“The federal government targets lifting 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by 2030 and NDE is supposed to generate employment for 10 million annually, alongside the ministry (Federal Ministry of Labour and Employment).
“Part of my mandate apart from that of the ministry is to ensure that at least we achieve 50 per cent from when am here to whenever I leave the ministry.
“We are to create labour, we are to help the unemployed, to ensure the informal economy is well taken care of,” she said.
She said that NDE was established to ensure strategies and policies were put in place to create employment opportunities for the well being of Nigerians.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Daju also visited Plateau Investment and Property Development Company where three of NDE’s GAP beneficiaries were retained at the completion of their programme.
She also visited a business outfit of a beneficiary of NDE’s SSE scheme, who established her fashion design business with start-up grants provided by the organisation.(NAN)
