National Directorate of Employment, NDE, said it will rehabilitate non-functional skills acquisition centres across the country.
Its Director General, Mr Silas Agara, said this on the sidelines of the ongoing 113th Session of the International Labour Conference in Geneva, Switzerland, yesterday.
Agara said the agency is making tremendous efforts to rehabilitate the skills acquisition centres.
“Not all the skills centres are functioning and that is very correct. We are taking statistics of those that are not functioning and those of other partners that have up-to-date effective skills centres nationwide.
“NDE alone cannot do it all. It cannot have the monopoly of training unemployed youths in the country.
“We are taking statistics of centres owned by other agencies and state governments, and there is the need for collaboration because these centres were built for unemployed persons and they should be able to benefit.
“So it is for us to be able to design our programmes and look at the timing.
“NDE will redesign its programmes so that those that have built those centres we don’t deny them the opportunity of using it for the purpose of which they developed it,” he said.
He said the agency’s mode of operation is being reviewed in order to serve the purpose for which it was created.
“We have to change the way that NDE operates, that is the only way beneficiaries can access what you are doing not like the analogue method where forms are distributed to beneficiaries.
“We have begun to address that situation where you have to log in and upload all your details, and your account details are there, BVN, and it makes it difficult for beneficiaries to be recycled.”
He also noted that NDE has so far, trained 93,000 Nigerians this year to become self-reliant, adding that it is developing a monitoring system to access the progress made by these trainees.
“It is not perfect yet, but it is a work in progress. We are able to track the people that we trained and track the items distributed to the trainees and their utilisation.
“Also, those that were given soft loan facilities because we have their records, we were also able to monitor the payment process.
“We are moving on to the next step. Hopefully by the end of June, we should be able to come out with packages for beneficiaries,” he said.
