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The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) has disbursed N2 million to 200 youths in Taraba State under its Micro Enterprises Enhancement Scheme (MEES).
The directorate had also early this year given out N3 million to 300 beneficiaries under the scheme.
Facilitated by the Director-General, Dr. Nasir Muhammed Ladan Argungu, the project has traders, artisans and others selected from all parts of the state.
Represented by the state coordinator, Alhaji Aderemi Adebisi, the DG commended President Muhammadu Buhari for giving the agency the “ample opportunity to lift some people out of poverty.”
He stressed that the NDE was “a child of circumstance as unemployment and poverty among school leavers and graduates started assuming a crisis proportion due to the economic recession of the 1980s.”
Acknowledging that the situation was forced by the “dearth of economically viable jobs, lack of capital and abysmally low level of functional education and rural-urban drift among the youths in search of non-existing white-collar jobs,” the directorate pledged to empower more youths and Nigerians.
Apart from the MEES, Argungu said the directorate has more training programmes “aimed at generating employment for the populace.”
Some of the initiatives, according to him, include basic national apprenticeship, advanced national open apprenticeship, school-on-wheel, graduate attachment programme and graduate coaching scheme.
Others are environmental beautification scheme, rural agricultural development training, integrated farming training scheme, entrepreneurship development programme, start-up training and micro businesses.
He said the agency had been working round the clock to get “all classes of unemployed trained and settled in various skills that will guarantee self-reliance.”
The coordinator noted that the current administration “under President Buhari is exploring opportunities of creating jobs to reduce the suffering of the common man.”
