YOUTHS EYE JOBS AT AVIC INTERNATIONAL

YOUTHS in Kitwe have appealed to Kitwe Mayor Christopher Kang`ombe to help them get employment with AVIC International that has set up camp on Kitwe-Chingola road in readiness for commencement of 56Km Kitwe road works.

Robert Mwaba a job seeker said in an interview that he and others have been going to site seeking employment, but had not been engaged yet.

Mr Mwaba who spoke in behalf of over 100 male and female job seekers, who queued up at AVIC camp site yesterday, said the company had not been employing local people and appealed to the Mayor to engage the company on the matter.

Kitwe Mayor Christopher Kan'gombe on the other hand assured the group of youths that AVIC would give priority to the locals, who had been camp- ing at the firm`s entrance for a long time. The Mayor toured the AVIC camp site in the company of two councillors and council engineers and assured that the government was desirous to witness participation of local companies in the project.

Mr Kang'ombe said the project should also be a way of training local contractors with skills so that in future a Zambians could undertake massive infrastructure development project as main contractors.

He urged the company to ensure that all the workers get letters of references after project completion so that they could seek employment elsewhere.

And AVIC Site Manager Wu Qi Liang said the company would recruit nine Zambia civil engineers who would be sent to China for further training.

Mr Wu said the purpose of training the locals was to impart more knowledge and skills in Zambians to work alongside the Chinese contractors on complex assignments.

Mr Wu said over 200 locals would be engaged as general workers, machinists, auto electricians, operators and many others.

He said so far 70 percent of the equipment was on site enough to commence the works.

He said works on the Ganerton roads commenced on Wednesday while on June 20 rehabilitation of town centre roads would also start.