Recently updated on October 24th, 2022 at 01:54 pm
The Industrial Training Fund (ITF) has achieved over 70 percent job placement for its trainees across major sectors of the economy in Nigeria, the Director-General, ITF, Dr. Juliet Chukkas-Onaeko has said.
She said the ITF’s focus was to ensure 100 percent employment for trainees that benefited from various trainings conducted in collaboration with the Nigeria Employers Consultative Association and other organisations.
Over 74,000 Nigerians have been trained in various vocational and technical areas under the 1,000 per state training scheme, while about one million benefitted from the overall ITF training projects, in-house and across industries in the last one year.
The DG noted that the ITF would continue to increase the number of trainees in the coming years to further address the issues of unemployment in the country. Already the process of training two million annually has commenced, according to ITF.
“Our focus is to achieve 100 percent employment for all trainees that come on the platform. And so far, I would say that we have done quite well. Up to 70 percent get retained by the companies that work with us to train these people, and some go to sister companies, other companies that offer the same services, and they get employed.
I have told my team that we should look at training and working on getting jobs for at least 50 percent of four million people to be trained. That is because the need is huge. If we don’t do this considering the number of youths that graduate from the universities every year, from the polytechnics and even the secondary schools, the unemployment rate will continue to grow at a very high rate.
The number of those living below poverty line is also high and we just need to do everything possible to reduce it. Because the figures are high, we need positive collaborations to achieve success, which is why we have entered into collaborations with different stakeholders. With concerted efforts and innovative thinking, we will get there.”
