…Makes Them Employers Of Labour
By Nsan Ndoma-Neji, Calabar
About 20,000 unemployed youths in Cross River State have been trained by the Industrial Training Fund, ITF, with skills that to make them become self reliant.
Skills gotten by the ITF trainees would help to promote wealth creation, step down incidences of youths restiveness and promote diversification of Nigeria’s economy in line with Federal Government’s policy aimed at turning around the nation’s economic landscape.
Director General, DG, of the ITF, Sir Joseph Ari, stated this while addressing the trainees on Thursday in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, during the closing ceremony of the 2022 ITF Skill Intervention Programme.
The DG averred that the ITF, under National Skill Industrial Skill Development, NISDP, and the Agri-preneurship Skill Empowerement Programme, AgSEP, has trained over 50,000 Nigerians nation wide, stressing that the closing ceremony is been replicated across the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory, FCT.
Speaking on behalf of the ITF DG, the Director Field Services, Mr. Akpan Idongesit, averred that about 255 youths had been trained in the area of solar power installation, tilling and laying of interlocking blocks and integrated farming.
Ari maintained that the skills acquisition training impacted on the trainees would help to step down incidences of youths restiveness, and other deviant behaviors constituting nuisance to the society.
He said, “We believe that given the intensity and the very practical nature of the training, which was 80 percent practical and 20 percent theoretical, they were equipped with neccesary skills and attitudes for them to thrive as employees or as entrepreneurs.
“When tied with the trades, which were chosen after careful and indepth need analysis of the locals, we have no doubt they will thrive, as trades they have learned will always be needed.”
He stated that the skills acquisition is premised on the fact that it remains the most viable and sustainable solution to rising unemployment and poverty that have continued to defy best efforts of government and non-governmental approaches.
In his remarks, the Calabar Area Manager of ITF, Mr. Vincent Iyam, solicited for cooperation from all to enable ITF discharge its mandate, as laid out by the Federal Government.
