THE time for the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) to demonstrate its capacity to generate massive employment for the unemployed persons is now, the Minister of Labour and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige has said.
He held that the NDE must expand its skills acquisition programmes in order to reduce the nation’s unemployment index.
Ngige disclosed this recently in Abuja during the inaugural meeting of the Board of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE). Ngige submitted that the NDE is a multipurpose vehicle whose mandate is anchored on creating varying programmes to ginger creativity, skills acquisition and self-reliance.
“The whole essence is to create a sustainable mechanism for job creation through skills development paradigm capable of producing a self-dependent generation of Nigerians who will not only empower themselves but also transfer the skills and replicate jobs,” the Minister said. He regretted that this noble ideal was being hampered by paucity of funds.
He added: “NDE as of today is not well funded. If it were to be rich, its mandate centers around training and equipping of trainees, empowering them with loans to set up their own businesses such as carpentry, tailoring, metal fabrication and welding, computer- based technology, mechatronics among others would be easy. But that’s not to say the NDE is not doing its best within the limit of available resources.”
However, he added that it was impossible for government alone to be charged with job creation as the private sector either alone or in liaison with the government has a huge role to play, saying that the public sector which the government controls is not expected to give more than 20% of jobs in a well-structured economy.
Ngige further said that part of the mandate of the NDE included the comprehensive national data on unemployment and therefore enjoined it to work in alliance with the National Identity Card Commission, who is currently creating a Single Data Base for the entire country.
Speaking Earlier, the Director General of the National Directorate of Employment Dr. Nasiru Mohammed Ladan, re-echoed the mandate of the NDE and averred that his focus was to streamline the operations of the agency for easy actualization of its objectives. He decried the high rate of non-compliance among the beneficiaries of its loan schemes, but assured that the agency would continue to encourage women cooperative societies across the nation.
