BREAKING NEWS, Business
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The Industrial Training Fund says it wants to get job for all its trainees even as it has already succeeded in finding employment for 70 percent of them in Nigeria
| By Anayo Ezugwu | Aug 17, 2015 @ 01:00 GMT |
DESPITE the scarcity of jobs in the country, the Industrial Training Fund, ITF, is finding jobs for its trainees in the major sectors of the Nigerian economy. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS, 574,498 unemployed people joined the labour market in the second quarter of 2015. But Juliet Chukkas-Onaeko, director-general, ITF, the Fund’s focus was to achieve 100 percent employment for all trainees that come on its platform.
“So far, we have done quite well. Up to 70 percent get retained by the companies that work with us to train these people, and some go to sister companies, other companies that offer the same services, and they get employed,” she said. Some of the trainings are done in collaboration with the Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association, NECA, and other organisations.
Chukkas-Onaeko spoke in Washington, DC, United States, on Sunday, August 2, while briefing stakeholders on the ITF-NECA collaboration. A statement on the ITF’s website quoted her as saying, that more than 74,000 Nigerians have been trained in various vocational and technical areas under the 1,000 per state training scheme, while about one million have benefitted from the overall ITF training projects, in-house and across industries in the last one year.
The director-general said the ITF would continue to increase the number of trainees in the coming years as part of the efforts to address the issue of unemployment in the country. Already, the ITF has commenced the process of training two million people annually.
“I have told my team that we should look at training and work on getting jobs for at least 50 per cent of the four million people to be trained. That is because the need is huge. If we don’t do this considering the number of youths that graduate from the universities every year, from the polytechnics and even the secondary schools, the unemployment rate will continue to grow at a very high rate,” Chukkas-Onaeko said.
She added that the ITF would adopt a holistic approach to tackle skill problems and called for the cooperation of both the public and private sector stakeholders in getting the right skills to ensure sustainable development of Nigeria’s economy. “The number of those living below poverty line is also high and we just need to do everything possible to reduce it. Because the figures are high, we need positive collaborations to achieve success, which is why we have entered into collaborations with different stakeholders. With concerted efforts and innovative thinking, we will get there,” she said.
While restating the Fund’s commitment to job creation and poverty alleviation, the ITF director general, said it was their responsibility to lay the foundation for sustainable growth and development through training for impact. The Fund was collaborating with youths to identify their needs in a bid to work out solutions that would leverage their comparative advantages to develop critical sectors.
“Right now, we are engaging more of the youth to work out solutions and to help us identify their needs. I have worked with them to carry out some feasibility studies on some two areas that are emerging and they are excited about the work we to do,” she said. But she was quick to add that ITF trainees were not just being trained for Nigerian employers alone.
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