By Bashir Mohammed
Kano
Industrial Training Fund (ITF), in conjunction with the Nigerian Employers Consultative Association (NECA), has graduated 59 trainees who had acquired various vocational skills, cutting across agriculture, electrical installation and motor vehicle maintenance work.
Speaking on the occasion, ITF’s Director-General/Chief Executive, Sir Joseph N. Ari, said the Fund in collaboration with NECA, had launched a Technical Skills Acquisition Programme that was meant to meet of the technical skills in the industrial sector of the economy.
He said the programme had come at a time when there was heavy influx of investments into the country as a result of the efforts and visionary leadership of the Muhammadu Buhari administration.
According to him, the trainees will complement the technical skills required or national industrial growth.
Ari, who was represented by an official in the Fund, Alhaji Ibrahim Lawal, however, said the nation’s developing economy “needs corps technicians and artisans to support the quest for industrial growth,” pointing out that the ceremony was a vivid testimony of a symbiotic collaboration between the organised private sector and the federal government.
The ITF boss maintained that the ITF had designed the National Industrial Skills Development Programme (NISDP) to fast track the achievement of the National Industrial Revolution (NIRP) of the federal government.
He said over 50,000 youths from across the 36 states and the FCT were trained indifferent trades which included agriculture, welding, and fabrication, plumbing, electrical installation, furniture, cabinet making, etc.
He added that the Fund had planned to train another set of 18,000 youths in the trades that were dominant and employable.
In his remarks, the Training Manager Industrial Skills Training Centre, Kano, Alhaji Umar Auta, said the Industrial Skills Training Centre had witnessed a modest growth in terms of manpower and infrastructure geared towards accomplishing its objectives.
He said the trainees were drawn from immediate communities surrounding the office as a result of lack of hostel accommodation, and appealed to stakeholders to assist the Fund by building a hostel for the trainees.
