Blessing Ibunge in Port Harcourt
A Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), in Rivers State that is known as Securing Individual Means (SIM), has concluded plan to secure over 2,300 youths in the state.
The group disclosed that it has begun online registration for unemployed youths of the state origin.
Also known as “What Rivers Youths Need,” the group noted that the project would meet needs of the youths particularly, in the area of economic empowerment, job creation among others.
The SIM Project Consultant, Blessing Fubara, said that the project is targeted at removing at least 2,300 youths from the list of 1.7 million jobless populations in the state before the 2023 election campaigns kicks off.
Fubara observed that lack of purpose has been the reason for disconnection between the youths and government of the state.
He said that the registration portal opened was meant to collate data of every unemployed youths in Rivers State, including their academic qualification, skill learnt, interests among others to guide the NGO on how to engage government on the behalf of the youths.
Fubara observed that succeeding administrations do not implement their campaign promises to the youths, which the SIM is poised to change beginning with the sitting government
He said: “This is political era and people are being distracted by politicians, political mandates and promises. There is need to get the sitting political leaders to implement their previous electioneering campaign promises before the commencement of another round in 2023.
“The recent unemployment survey report on Rivers State has it that over 1.7 million people are jobless in the state.
“There is apparently high level of hardship, hunger and poverty in the state.
“We want to do proper potential analysis of Rivers’ youths, what is your academic qualification, what is your interest, what is your passion, what are you doing at the moment. We want to see how we can be able to take away at least 2,300 persons out of unemployment list before the election is held next year.
“We are reaching out to them with loans, grant offers. The loan will come without any collateral and it will be interest-free loan.”
Fubara further explained that “already we have reached out to some banks in the state for partnership in this project.
“At the same time, we are also reaching out to the youths in the line of their business needs, we’re also going to present them with employment offers and because we have their data, statistics we are going to speak with organisations who have job openings particularly those who published job vacancies that match with the informations we have in our database to give them the opportunities.
“Beyond skilled jobs, businesses and white collar jobs, we’re also going to provide opportunities for those who would like to go into farming to also explore. This will be going on in 18 local governments of the state.
“Already, three of the local governments have already donated 30 acres of farmland for this purpose, 10 acres each. There is also plan for to establish agricultural processor chain for large scale farming.
“The plan is to organise the youths into 10 cooperatives society with 10 members in each unit of cooperative to operate each of the farms in the local governments, each cooperative group to operate on one acre of land.
“The youths will be handed over farming implements and seeds to farm. We will also recommend them to our bank partners for loans under the out-grower chain.”
He also appealed to every jobless youth in the state to take advantage of the project on “What Rivers Youths Need” to get what they want before the next political dispensation.
“Already the registration portal at the last check has over 1000 registrations.
“This is a proof that the youths have been expecting a project like this, it shows that they are tired of roaming about without any means of livelihood. It proves that the rate of unemployment is indeed high in the state.”
