Lafia – The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) in Nasarawa State, says it has trained and graduated 1,977 unemployed persons in different skills acquisition programmes in the past four years.
Alhaji Dauda Idris-Wase, the state Coordinator, made this known in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lafia on Sunday.
Idris-Wase said that the agency deemed it necessary to organise different skill acquisition programmes free of charge in order to empower unemployed persons with skills.
The initiative, he said, was to make them self-reliant and enable them to contribute their quota to national development.
“NDE came in to existence in 1986, saddled with the responsibility of training people, especially youths and women in different skill acquisition programmes in the country.
“This is to make them to be self-reliant and to contribute their quota to national development.
“There is a high rate of unemployment and the situation has resulted to many engaging in anti-social activities such as violent crimes, insecurity, armed robbery, drug and human trafficking, among others.
“I want to disclose to you that recently 360 trainees were recruited for training in the three skills acquisition centres in Lafia, Mama and Keffi; but out of this number, 324 trainees endured to complete their training successfully and have been graduated.
“With this, the total number of unemployed youths that have now been trained in different vocational skills by the state NDE acquisition centres since inception in year 2012 is 1,977.”
He identified the vocations to include catering, tailoring/fashion design, hair dressing, plumbing and pipe fittings, interior decoration, computer maintenance/operation, welding and catering, among others.
He advised youths to embrace skill acquisition for the overall development of the country instead of waiting for white collar jobs.
Idris-Wase further called for a collective efforts and partnership with the agency in order to provide job opportunities for all categories of unemployed persons to reduce abject poverty and generate wealth in the country.
He used the medium to also advise the beneficiaries of the programmes to utilize the knowledge and skills they had acquired and to become employers of labour for the overall development of the country.
The coordinator reiterated the directorate’s commitment to initiating more people-oriented programmes in order to tackle youth unemployment, restiveness and poverty in the state and the country at large.