The Minister of Labour and Employment, Mr Chris Ngige has urged all unemployed Nigerians to register at the online job portal of the social intervention scheme of the federal government in order to benefit from its different categories of programmes. Registration on the portal(www.npower.gov.ng) ends Wednesday, August 31, 2016.
The Minister made the call over the weekend while flagging off the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) School-to-Work Programme in Calabar, Cross River State.
“By last week, the portal has only recorded about 1.2 million persons. We expect more persons to have been registered in the portal before our screening exercise. The portal closes 31st August 2016 which is just few days away,” Ngige said.
“For those who are not computer literate, we advise state governments to encourage them by using local government chairmen to move into local government areas and register the unemployment persons there, so that they can qualify to be considered for the scheme. Each state of the federation is expected to recruit about 1,500 persons,” he said.
The minister said the the School-To-Work programme is an expression of the renewed vigour by the ministry to catch them young, and a bold attempt to build a future Nigeria where white-collar jobs would be unattractive.
“We are building a generation of Nigerians where creative thinking, self-confidence and dignity of labour will challenge the prevailing unemployment scourge. We are building a generation of Nigerians who will not only create wealth with their hands but are proud employers with skills from hands that God has given them.
“This is two-month vacation creative job learning scheme for students in JSS 1 to SSS 2 classes. It is meant to provide them with skills early in life so that they can graduate and earn a living if they wish not to continue after secondary education or have an income earning skill to fall back on while doing higher education. This set of students will graduate to higher skills training the next vacation while others succeed them. By this, we are re-thinking a university education system where graduates fold hands and wait for food on their table,” he said.
He said 150 persons would be trained yearly from each of the states of the federation under the scheme which has Calabar, Anambra, Bauchi, Katsina, Kogi and Ondo as the headquarters for the six zonal training centres.
He said the programme was built with enough provision for decent work in line with the stipulations by the International Labour Organisation so as to foreclose the possibility of child labour in the course of training and thereafter.
In his remarks, the Acting Director General of the NDE, Mr. Kunle Obayan said the NDE was constantly preoccupied with providing initiatives that would address the ever changing forms and patterns of unemployment.
He said the programme was designed to provide diverse vocational, agricultural and entrepreneurial skills training for secondary school students during long vacation, stressing that the age grouping was the best peak to tackle youth unemployment with acquisition of skills.
Speaking when the minister paid him a courtesy call at the Government House Calabar, Governor Ben Ayade commended the ministry for the foresight and innovative approach in tackling the scourge of unemployment in the country.
