Two million youths to benefit from ITF programmes yearly, says DG

The Industrial Training Fund [ITF] has refocused its training programme to equip at least two million youths yearly with employable and life skills required for self and paid employment, the Director -General of the Fund, Dr. Mrs Juliet Chukkas-Onaeko hassaid.

Chukkas- Onaeko further stated that as a proactive organization, ITF has acquired two mobile workshops to complement its existing Industrial Skills Training Centres in view of increasing accessibility to skills training in all nooks and crannies of the country.

The ITF boss disclosed this in her keynote address during a stakeholders’ forum held in Abuja.

The seminar themed, ‘’Zero Oil Policy and Economic Growth Strategies in Nigeria: The ITF Perspective’’ highlighted key activities of the Fund’s contributions over the years as well as the various reforms put in place to support the federal government’s policy transit from oil to other sectors.

Dr. Chukkas-Onaeko said: ‘’As part of our responsibility to key into the federal government’s transformation agenda, the ITF launched the National Industrial Skills Development [NISDP]. The objective of this programme is to provide skills to support the NIRP. So far, 74,000 young Nigerians have been trained in different technical and vocational trade areas’’.

According to her, most of the trainees have secured employment immediately after the completion of their training while a large number of them have established businesses of their own and are doing well.

“The ITF is also partnering with the Nigerian Employers Consultative Association [NECA], for the training of young Nigerians, so far, over 2,3000 trainings have benefited from this partnership’’.

She said the Fund cannot do it all alone hence it organized the workshop to draw meaningful suggestions in the course of the deliberations on how best the Fund can serve the Nigerian people better.

In his Paper titled, ‘’Growth Strategies in a Transition Economy; The ITF Perspective, the Director, Business training department of ITF, Joseph Ari said that for Nigeria to make progress, there is the need for her to increase the contribution of the manufacturing sector to the GDP.

‘’When oil prices crashes, we fail to check our consumption pattern –ostentatious life continued leading to high debt profile’’, he noted.

He added, ‘’Our unemployment is artificial, it is self-inflicted and if we are to add value in all raw materials, we may not have enough Nigerians to work in the plants’’.