Employ skilled youths, NEPAD tasks private sector

Employ skilled youths, NEPAD tasks private sector

NAN-H-105

Employment

By Lizzy Okoji

Abuja, March 1, 2017 (NAN) Mrs Gloria Akobundu, the National Coordinator, the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), has called on the private sector to employ beneficiaries of its skills acquisition training.

She made the appeal in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Wednesday in Abuja.

According to her, NEPAD Nigeria is making plans to give the data of youths who have passed through its skills training programmes to private companies and investors in Nigeria for job opportunities.

“We are planning to partner with the private sector, the Chambers of Commerce, to come up with a programme where we will give the data of all the trained youths to private sectors and investors in Nigeria.

“This is for them to make available job opportunities at their various companies so that the youths are not just trained and go back home to sit idle.

“That has been the challenge of other training programmes when youths are trained and left on their own.

“We want to make our youths employable because the complaint by most private sectors and investors are that Nigerian Youths are not employable which is why they would rather import their own labour.

“That is why we want to embark on this skills training which could also be likened to the finishing school, because even when you graduate, you still go for training to fine tune yourself.

“ We are targeting as much youths as we can to benefit from this programme and who would have access to starting funds and starter kits to become self-reliant,’’ Akobundu said.

She explained that the training also aimed at making the beneficiaries employers of labour so that after acquiring the skills they can employ others and also retrain them.

She disclosed that a mentorship programme has been designed by NEPAD Nigeria to monitor the beneficiaries after they have been facilitated with funds and starter kits.

The coordinator said the mentorship department would do a regular follow up on beneficiaries, pay them surprise visits to ensure that they are actually utilising the funds and starter kits.

Akobundu pointed out that one major challenge is the fact that after most capacity building trainings, beneficiaries misuse the funds and kits, and return to becoming a burden to the society.

She therefore called for collaboration with the Ministry of Youths and Sports so that they would be able to track and monitor the activities of the beneficiaries with their data with a view to addressing these challenges.

Besides, she said that the first phase of the training initiative might not capture the entire youths of Nigeria but it hopes to accommodate as many youths as possible in its expanded programme. (NAN)

LIZ/MST

Edited by Muhammad Suleiman Tola