NASENI empowers 100 Nasarawa youths in POP production, others

THENational Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure ( NASENI) has moved to Nasarawa State to train 100 youths in the production of Plaster of Paris ( POP) and installation.

The training programme was the first phase of NASENI’S North Central regional skill development, as part of President Muhammadu Buhari’s directive to ensure that youths are trained in various trades.

Declaring the training open, yesterday, in Nasarawa, the Executive Vice Chairman ( EVC) of NASENI, Prof. Mohammed Haruna, said: “The skill development training and youth empowerment programme by the agency across the country are aimed at introducing modern and technological ways of carrying out existing trades by the people at the grassroots. It was also targeted at developing the needed critical competent workforce for industrialisation of the country, a charge that had been given to NASENI by President Buhari.”

Haruna added that the training and re- training were to make practitioners more efficient and to enhance the prospects of earning a living from their chosen vocation.

The agency, he explained, always carried out its feasibility studies on vocations in all the geo- political zones of the country to know what the youth in each zone were already making a living from and to re- train them on using modern equipment to strengthen their skills and make room for job creation and self- reliance.

Haruna said: “We are in the nation’s home of solid minerals, Nasarawa, the North Central zone, to train 100 selected youths from the zone on the Modern Method of Casting POP and application. The POP is basically dehydrated gypsum, or calcium sulphate, available in powdered form.”