Emeka Nze
Abuja
The Industrial Training Fund (ITF) has appealed to the National Conference Committee on Labour, Civil Society, Youth and Sports to recommend to the federal government to provide funds for the agency, even on loan basis, for the immediate establishment of Industrial Training Centres in the 36 states of the federation and Abuja.
The Director-General of the centre, Prof Sambo Longmas Wapmuck, who made this appeal, said the ITF which is targeting the secondary school leavers and drop outs for the training would churn out 625 people in each state saying that if they are empowered with skills, they would be able to set up something for themselves after the training.
Wapmuck said the revenue base of the agency is increasing, it should be able to pay back the loan if assisted by the federal government to set up the centres.
Wapmuck stated that the ITF trains on annual basis not less than 20, 000 people in various companies as the establishment organises programmes for staff of government and other companies in various skills noting that the constraint to its operations has been funding.
He, however, said that with the new decision of government for ITF to be self funding, he hoped that the establishment would make more efforts to generate more funds since government has not been giving money to the agency.
He said what the government gives was money for students industrial work experience scheme, but, which he said is not enough, thereby creating backlog of about N12 million being debt owed the students.
He said that payment of allowances to the students should be discouraged since the agency is not meeting up with the payment, and for which they once wrote a petition against him.