By Kingsley Nwezeh
Determined to reduce youth unemployment in the South-east, the federal government has concluded arrangements to provide employment for youths and vulnerable women in the 95 Local Government Areas that constitute the zone.
Part of the plan is to provide vocational skills and other empowerment initiatives in furtherance of the ongoing social investment programmes (SIPs) spearheaded by the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development.
A statement issued by the Coordinator of an indigenous support group, the South East Support for N-Power, Kamsi Uzodinma, said the project was being implemented by the group in collaboration with the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs.
According to the group, the investment programmes were in the areas of vocational skills notably tailoring, carpentry, shoe making, trading, aquaculture, and healthcare.
The support group explained that the social interventions approved by the federal government were part of measures to assure the South-east that it remained an integral part of the Nigerian State which is founded on equity, justice and egalitarianism.
To demonstrate its commitment towards making the programmes a huge success, the group said, government had since appointed focal persons in the five states of the zone saddled with the responsibility of monitoring and evaluation.
It said this is with a view to ensuring that intervention programmes across the 96 LGAs and 15 Senatorial Districts were executed to specification to meet the sole objective of impacting positively on the youths and vulnerable women.
“We use this medium to assure Ndigbo both home and in the diaspora that the federal government is interested in the development of the South-east, as in other zones of the country.
“As a support group, SESNAM is undertaking awareness campaigns throughout the length and breadth of the South-east aimed at calling out beneficiaries of N-Power and other SIPs in the zone, to come out and tell the stories of their turn-around”, it said.
The group noted that “apart from the tens of thousands of the beneficiaries, we are also sensitising our youths and women on how to apply to be beneficiaries of the N-Power Batch C which was recently held by the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Sadiya Umar-Farouq, in Abuja.
“In fact, beneficiaries of N-Power and other intervention programmes have been coming out to tell their stories of breakthrough to the public, which has continued to change hitherto-erroneous narratives”.
The statement further stated that “many of the beneficiaries have gone ahead to establish businesses, which have made them employers of labour, as seen in the number of youths they currently have in their employ”.
