Governor Seyi Makinde on Friday met with top management team of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) to synergise on a way out.
The NDE team led by the Oyo state coordinator, Mr Awosanya Adebanjo met the governor in his Agodi secretariat office during a courtesy call, the Nation reports.
In his remarks, Governor Makinde told the visitors that his government is determined to set the pace in the country for taking a lot of its youths out of poverty and making them an asset to the state.
He said, “Oyo state is not ready to set the pace in poverty multiplication among the youths but will do everything that is possible to alleviate poverty in the state.
“We are aware that NDE have programme that have to do with the youths, empowerment, positive engagement of the people and things that could reduce social tension and that can rapidly turn the state around.
“We also know that the agency have responsibility to assist youths of the state and I can assure you that our government would cooperate with the directorate and support its activities towards providing training that would make the youths self-reliance and self-employed.”
He also assured the visitors that their requests for support and assistance has been noted and would be looked into.
Earlier in his address, Adebanjo briefed the governor on the activities of the NDE, saying that the Directorate was established in 1986 to combat unemployment, especially among the youths.
He added that NDE had collaboration with the World Bank, in form of a programme called Youths Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO), which he said is being implemented by the World Bank, Federal Government and the participating states of which Oyo is among.
He said, ”Already, we have held three cycles of training on this programme, which was designed to alleviate poverty among the vulnerable and poor households in the seven participating states.
”In these states, YESSO has all components and the components NDE is anchoring is called skills for job; it involves training young poor people in marketable skills.
“We have observed that some youths are unemployed not because there was no job to do ‘but because they didn’t have the required skills, marketable skills that would grant them employment.
”YESSO is about training for skills for jobs, so NDE train these youths from vulnerable household with marketable skills that will make them self-employed, self-reliance and to even have access to wage employment where possible”.
He categorized the skills for jobs into three levels of training namely, life skills, sector specific training and entrepreneurship training, adding that the trainees would be attached to where they would do three months internship, after the three levels of the training totaled nine months programme.
