By Cross Udo, Abuja
Interim Administrator of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Maj-Gen. Barry Ndiomu (retd.), has urged vendors handling vocational skills training programmes to properly negotiate job placement conditions with relevant institutions to secure guaranteed employment which would offer minimum living income and benefits for the delegates at the end of such training.
Ndiomu stated this when he visited one of the vendors, Sunup Logistics Ltd, in Port Harcourt where 200 delegates from the Presidential Amnesty Programme are currently undergoing vocational skills training in maritime and related areas to acquire competencies in a swamp buggy, cranes, and fork-lifting operations, plumbing, carpentry, tug boat/barges operations.
The Interim Administrator said he was concerned that only 50 per cent of the delegates will be employed for a short period of 30 months after which they might be thrown back to the labour market to start hunting for fresh jobs, saying that such an arrangement would not provide guaranteed employment for the delegates.
According to him, “Having listened to you (CEO of Sunup Logistics Ltd), that at the end of the day you are talking of employing just 50 per cent of the trained delegates. You know am asking questions because I would have thought that when you have a training programme like this, the idea is to have them gainfully employed at the end of the training. What we expect of them (delegates) is to be employed because the whole thing to me, is like an uncertainty.
“The Presidential Amnesty Scheme intends to keep these boys (delegates) busy after providing them with the vocational skills so that they do not go back to the same thing. From your briefing, I don’t think we are moving in the direction of success. I think we need to find a way to address these issues.
“Go and negotiate and get slots from relevant industries or firms that can engage the delegates and train them to meet the needs of these companies. By now, you should have had job placement slots for these 200 delegates you have here.
“There are opportunities outside this country. Because these institutions we are talking about require skills. You go and negotiate and get slots for the delegates to be employed after their training here. We need institutions that should absorb them after the training,” Ndiomu reiterated.
Earlier, the CEO of Sunup Logistics Ltd, Mr. Frank Ovie had briefed the Interim Administrator about the various vocational skills programmes being offered at the centre, adding that two the hundred amnesty delegates were currently undergoing various vocational skills training and that only 50% of the delegates will be employed for just 30 months.
Ovie said at the end of the training the graduands will be duly certified by various accrediting international bodies to enable them to work anywhere in the world, noting that more delegates could be engaged, pending the improvement in the job supply needs from the oil and gas sector which according to him, was gradually coming back after the COVID-19 pandemic.
The spokesman for the delegates, Bobos Ebizimor, appealed to the Interim Administrator to look into their plight and come to their aid to enable a hitch-free programme.
