Government to engage 4,000 ex-militants

C’River seeks halt of industrial action
The Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) and the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) are collaborating to get 4,000 former militants gainfully employed.

In a statement yesterday in Abuja, PAP Coordinator and Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta Affairs, Brigadier-General Paul Boroh (rtd), said the programme has a pool of over 13,000 beneficiaries trained in various vocations, adding that efforts were in top gear to engage them soon.

Boroh was quoted to have made the remarks when he led a delegation to visit the Executive Secretary of NCDMB, Simbi Kesiye Wabote, in Yenegoa, where both organisations brainstormed on getting the ex-agitators productively engaged.

Wabote expressed his pleasure at the administration of the programme, emphasizing Boroh’s focus on agriculture in line with the Federal Government’s new strategy to diversify the national economy.

He pledged to assist the PAP coordinator in his bid to engage all beneficiaries of the scheme.Boroh also called on multinationals and government agencies to engage the youths rather than importing manpower from other nations.

Meanwhile, the Cross River government has called on organised labour to call off its five-day old strike. It assured unions that “no staff will be victimised for doing so.”

The government contended that the industrial action was unnecessary since it had met the demands of the workers. It reminded the striking workforce that they must work to earn their pay.

The Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Mrs. Tina Bankor Agbor in a statement yesterday in Calabar, urged labour to consider the interest of the state and return to work.But the state Trade Union Congress (TUC) chairman, Comrade Clarkson Otu, faulted government’s claim.

“It was not true that the government has met with the terms of agreement because if they have implemented them, we would not have gone on strike in the first place. They have refused to implement the agreement we reached, especially as it concerns promotion and others.”