ITF DG Lauds Buhari on Job Creation, Graduates Trainees
BY CHAMBERLAIN ODEY, JOS – The Director General of the Industrial Training Fund (ITF), Sir Joseph Ntung Ari, has lauded the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari over its focus and commitment to the national socio-economic imperative of creating jobs, as the Fund graduates 221 trainees from its National Industrial Skills Development Programme.
According to Ari, who was recently decorated by the Catholic Church leadership as a Papal Knight of St Sylvester, KSS, “President Buhari’s administration has made tremendous efforts to create jobs since the inception of the government almost five years ago”.
Speaking on the occasion of the closing ceremony of the 2019 National Skills Development Programme (SIDP), of the Industrial Training Fund in Jos, Ari who expressed delight and satisfaction with “the occasion of the graduation ceremony and distribution of start-up packs to beneficiaries”, also noted that the “NISDP is one o he numerous skills acquisition intervention programmes introduced and implemented by the Fund to facilitate the achievement of the federal government’s policy on job and wealth creation”.
Ari elucidated further that the NISDP “focuses on skills acquisition to create jobs to stem rampant unemployment and breed a new generation of entrepreneurs to transform the economic landscape of the country”.
An analysis of the skills captured in the 3-6 months training that culminated in this graduation shows that “in all, over 11.000 Nigerians were equipped with skills in 9 trades”. These trades, the analysis indicates further, include leather works, wielding and fabrication, catering and event management, including production and laying of interlock tiles, furniture making, domestic electrical wiring and installation, solar energy installation, plumbing and pipe fitting, and autogelle and beauty care.
Plateau State Governor, Simon Bako Lalong, represented by the Deputy Governor, Sonni Tyoden who, impressed by the visible efforts and results of the ITF under Si Joseph Ari, described the DG as
“effective, efficient, and innovative”, said for Nigeria to truly surge ahead industrially and keep pace with other nations of the world, “we must invest in skills acquisition”, and urged the ITF to continue and invigorate the imperatives of training, skills acquisition, and trainee empowerment.
In a welcome address to the occasion, the Area Manager, Jos Area office at whose regional auspices the exercise was conducted, Khadijatu Sani Mudi, noted that “this is one of the noble initiatives of the Industrial Training Fund, ITF, towards empowering our teeming youth for self reliance and skill acquisition”, saying “today, we are graduating the first batch of two hundred and twenty one (221) NISDP trainees, out of three hundred and fifty (350) in Plateau State”.
Starter packs defined according to trade and training were given free to each of the two hundred and twenty one (221) graduates who were generally encouraged not to sell them but to put them into productive and regenerative use.
