By Joseph Kingston
Calabar
Director-General of National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Mr Abubakar Mohammed, has said that over 8, 000 certificate holders across Nigeria, with deficiencies in their result, have benefited from the Directorate’s Graduate Coaching Scheme programme in the past three years.
Mohammed disclosed this yesterday in Calabar during the flag-off of the 2014 GCS Programme.
He said the programme was established in 2012 with the objective of engaging unemployed youths to teach secondary school leavers who had deficiencies in English Language and other science-related subjects.
Represented by the Director of Small Scale Enterprise in the Directorate, Mr Jibrin Aye, he said the programme was on-going in 20 states of the federation.
He also said over 300 unemployed youths have so far benefitted from the programme as they were being paid a monthly allowance of N10, 000 each to teach the students.
He said: “We recruit and coach instructors to teach these school leavers, and we pay them a monthly allowance of N10, 000, and the programme runs for three months. The GCS is capable not only of reducing unemployment among the graduates, but has the potential for curtailing early entry into the labour market.”
In his speech, the Cross River Coordinator of NDE, Mr Edem Duke, said the programme was established to engage unemployed youths in meaningful activities that would provide income for them.
Duke said the programme was free of charge for all secondary school leavers who had deficiency in their papers, adding that it would last for three months.
