Five hundred and ten youth and women are undergoing a three-month training on Basic National Open Apprenticeship Scheme (B-NOAS) and Advanced National Open Apprenticeship Scheme (A-NOAS) being organised by Vocational Skills Department (VSD) of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE).
For the B-NOAS, 20 trainees were drawn from the seventeen local government areas that made up Enugu state, thereby bringing the number of participants to 340, while 10 trainees were drawn from each of the 17 local governments for the A-NOAS.
The lucky trainees would be trained on different vocational skills such as Event Management, Fashion Designing, Inverter Installation, GSM repairs, soap-making, bakery, among others.
Speaking at the official launch of the programme Thursday at the NDE office, Enugu, the director-general, NDE, Malam Abubakar Nuhu Fikpo, said the training was designed to “create skilled persons in both rural and urban areas who would, in turn, become self-employed and further create employment/wealth and therefore reduce poverty.”
Fikpo, who was represented by the Enugu state coordinator of NDE, Mrs. Ifeoma Ezepue, also said the programme was also designed to impart relevant marketable and functional skills that is locally and urban based, pointing out that the training will equally curb societal crimes and youth restiveness occasioned by youth unemployment.
Also speaking, the representative of the VSD, Abuja, Mrs. Agnes Ogbaga, said NDE had been training and empowering Nigerian youths in order to reduce unemployment “since the government alone cannot provide jobs for all its youth.”
“Have a skill and you will help yourself and move the country forward,” she said, urging them to be focused on their training.
