NDE trains 510 Abia youths on skills acquisition

Some 510 unemployed Abia youths drawn from the 17 local government areas of the state are to be trained in various vocations by the National Directorate of Employment (NDE). Chijioke Uzoatuegwu, the state coordinator of NDE, said at the opening ceremony and orientation programme for the 2020 Basic National Open Apprenticeship Scheme (B-NOAS) trainees held in Umuahia, the Abia State capital.

The Abia NDE Coordinator who said that B-NOAS is one of the components of NDE in Nigeria, disclosed that 30 persons from each of the 17 LGAS of the State would undergo three months intensive training in all the local government areas and at the NDE/ skill acquisition center situated in the state. Uzoatuegwu urged beneficiaries to concentrate fully during the training period as measures had been put in place to assess their performance, punctuality and regularity.

The NDE coordinator who lauded the wife of the state governor, Nkechi Ikpeazu for collaborating with the directorate through her pet project - Vicar Hope Foundation, also appealed to all stakeholders in employment generation in the country to augment the efforts of the NDE in combating the unabated menace of unemployment over the years, as she said that the Federal Government could not do it alone.

Chris Adighije, NDE board member, flagged off the training. He said he was happy with the programme; pointing out that the Federal Government was gearing up so much towards alleviating the problems of unemployment in Nigeria.

Adighije, represented by Chidi Nwosu, a former legislator in Abia House of Assembly, said the programme would engage the Nigeria youths in productive venture, which according to him, would help to ameliorate the employment problems of Nigeria. He described the programme as a laudable one and charged the trainees to fully embrace the training in order to be self-reliant, so that NDE’S efforts would not be a waste.

In appreciation, one of the trainees, Faith Ochulor described the programme as a laudable one, as they are being trained free of charge to become useful in life and alleviate poverty in the country.