National Directorate of Employment (NDE) has trained 26 unemployed persons on environmental beautification skills in Imo.
Director-General of NDE, Mallam Abubakar Nuhu-Fikpo, said this shortly before distributing equipment for environmental beautification to the beneficiaries of the training in Owerri on Thursday.
Nuhu-Fikpo, who was represented by NDE in Imo, Mrs Chisara Egwim-Chima, said that the programme was organised by the directorate’s Department of Special Public Works (SPW).
He stated that the equipment would enable the beneficiaries put the skills they had been taught into practice.
The NDE director-general listed the equipment to include: wheelbarrows, shovels, rakes, trowels, hoes, moulds, water pumping machines, gloves, saws, plums, water hoses and some cash components.
“The equipment will enable the beneficiaries to practice environmental beautification skills, such as hard and soft landscaping and Plaster of Paris (POP), among others.
“They have been adequately trained and they will now be empowered with tools and some cash components.
“In our innovative manner, we introduced distribution of working tools, as against cash, to mitigate challenges arising from the wrong use of empowerment funds. That is why we are providing more equipment than cash,” he said.
Speaking, NDE’s Director of SPW, Mrs Roseline Olaomi, said that the equipment would be provided as soft loans repayable in cash equivalents at the expiration of a six-month period.
Olaomi, who was represented by Mr Kenneth Okafor, congratulated the beneficiaries on the successful completion of the training, urging them to put the skills and loaned equipment into good use.
She said that the training was aimed at reducing unemployment in the society and eventually produce ripple effects when the beneficiaries gradually mutated to employers of labour.
One of the beneficiaries, Mr Miracle Onyema, of Ihitte-Uboma council area, thanked NDE for remembering the unemployed and promised to justify the resources spent in facilitating the programme.
NAN
