Firm Empowers Youths for Self-employment

A leading cargo company in the Nigerian aviation industry, Greater Washington Logistics in conjunction with Empowering African Youth International Organisation (EMFRICA), has trained about 600 youths on cargo handling and facilitation.

This is an aspect of airfreighting that does not need huge capital but technical skills and safety regulations.

Those who benefitted from the training could start their own businesses at small scale levels. This has been found to be lucrative as they attend to numerous private cargoes and passenger movement businesses at the airports.

The company said that the training of the youths was part of its Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR), which was aimed at reducing the high unemployment rate in the country.

The applicants were trained for five days in Lagos and during the period, were exposed to the rudiments of cargo business in Nigeria and how to source for them.

Managing Director, Greater Washington Logistics, Mrs. Adenike Brown told journalists that the training would enable some of the youths to be self-employed and be able to set up their own franchise companies in the future, adding that it was also in-line with the plans of the federal government to reduce unemployment rates in the country.

Brown hinted that some of the brilliant trainees among them would be absorbed into the system by the management, but noted that the major essence of the training was for the youths to make extra money through cargo and logistics business.

She said: “The primary aim is just to give back to the society and at the end of the trainning, we will identify the scholars among them and employ a few of them. As we all know, there are no jobs out there and we all have to keep the youth aware of what they can do for themselves to make extra money and take people off the streets. With this, they will have knowledge of things they can do and make extra money for themselves.”

Also commenting on the programme, the Assistant General Manager, Corporate Services and Admin, Mr. Bright Aghogban said that the company had always taken safety and training as a very key objective that must be met by all.

He declared that in order to ensure safety at all times, the company had consistently in the past two years trained registered agents that carry goods on its platform airlines, which he said had reduced carriage of dangerous goods onboard airlines drastically.

Aghogban explained that the company exposed them to where the cargo items could be sourced and trained them on every skill required to survive in aviation industry.

“We have taken them to the cargo facilities to expose them to how the business runs and we let them know that it doesn’t take rocket science to actually do well in this business. You don’t even have to be a graduate to be a cargo agent or own a cargo agency.

What they just need to know is what we have given to them in these five days. We have trained them in the entire body of knowledge that forms logistics and supplier chain management in Nigeria, which is the commercial aspect of the operations, airlifting and movement of items from one place to the other.”

Besides, the Regional Head, Empowering African Youth International Organisation, EMFRICA, Mr. Babajide Akin-Thomas explained that no fewer than 5000 youths applied for the training, but only 600 were eventually shortlisted for the final training programme.