Five hundred and 10 youths and women are undergoing a three-month training on Basic National Open Apprenticeship Scheme (B-NOAS) and Advanced National Open Apprenticeship Scheme (A-NOAS) being organised by the Vocational Skills Department (VSD) of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE).
For the B-NOAS, 20 trainees were drawn from the 17 LGAs of Enugu State, thereby bringing the number of participants to 340, while 10 trainees were drawn from each of the 17 LGAs for the A-NOAS.
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The participants are to be trained on different vocational skills such as event management, fashion designing, inverter installation, GSM repair, soap making and bakery.
Speaking during the launch of the training at the NDE office, Enugu, the Director-General (DG) of NDE, Mallam Abubakar Nuhu Fikpo, said the training was to “create skilled persons in both rural and urban areas who would, in turn, become self-employed and further create employment/wealth and therefore reduce poverty.”
Fikpo, who was represented by the Enugu State Coordinator of NDE, Mrs Ifeoma Ezepue, further said that the programme was also designed to impart relevant marketable and functional skills that were locally and urban-based.
According to him, after the training, the trainees would be attached to master craftsmen who would assist them to be more proficient in what they were taught during the session.
Also speaking, the representative of the VSD, Abuja, Mrs Agnes Ogbaga, said NDE had been training and empowering Nigerian youths in order to reduce unemployment since the government alone could not provide jobs for all its youths.