79 Internally Displaced Persons drawn from Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, have graduated from a skills acquisition programme sponsored by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) with diplomas in automotive technology. The graduates consisted of 2 young women and 77 young men. For more than a year, the Peugeot Automobile Nigeria (PAN) Learning Centre in Kaduna served hosted the Automotive Technology Skills Acquisition Programme.
The trainees were enrolled for the one-year course in mid-2016 under the auspices of the UNDP Livelihood Support Project and were successfully trained in auto-Mechanics, mechatronics, panel beating, welding and auto-spray painting. 700 IDPs were shortlisted for the first phase of the scheme aimed at achieving early economic recovery in the conflict-affected areas but only 575 registered. They were placed into three technical facilities in Kaduna, Maiduguri and Yola, of which the 79 trainees became the first batch of graduates with another 179 to graduate within a week in Yola. The last batch from the Ramat Polytechnic Maiduguri and PAN Learning Centre will graduate in November 2017 and February 2018 respectively.
The UNDP Country Director, Samuel Bwalya who witnessed the graduation ceremony expressed the hope that after passing through the training process the graduates would become peace advocates, responsible citizens, better business managers and potential leaders in their communities. “As UNDP, we are working towards ensuring that necessary early recovery needs are met through vocational skills training, livelihood support, and rehabilitation of public infrastructure. These efforts are providing catalytic ingredients for communities to thrive again, for individuals to be able to fend for themselves again and for development to return to the region,” Bwalya said. He added that UNDP remained committed to supporting the government in establishing standard technical vocational training facilities which would be useful in providing skills to women and the youth.
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