Mrs. Chika Onah, the Enugu State Coordinator of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), says the Directorate has begun sensitization of farmers to know the various agricultural intervention funds in the state.
Onah disclosed this in Enugu on Thursday during the Orientation of 100 beneficiaries of the Sustainable Agricultural Development Training Scheme (SADTS).
The coordinator said that sensitising the farmers in the state would enable them to know how to access the intervention funds made available by the Federal Government and other international partners.
Onah revealed that the NDE also assisted farmers financially through soft loans.
According to her, the Directorate monitors the beneficiaries of the soft loans to ensure that the loans are not channeled into any other thing apart from agricultural purposes.
On the SADTS programme, she disclosed that the selected 100 beneficiaries were trained on animal husbandry, poultry, and other types of agricultural practices.
She described the SADTS programme as one of the contributions of the agency to ensure food security in the country.
Mr. Adizue Okoye, the Enugu state coordinator, Raw Materials Research and Development Council, promised that his agency would provide technical support to NDE to ensure the Sustenance of the programme.
Okoye stressed that the training was appropriate as it was coming at a time when the country was on the verge of experiencing food scarcity.
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He urged the beneficiaries to take the training seriously for better results.
Also speaking, the Commissioner for Agriculture, Mr. Matthew Idu, represented by his Technical Assistant, Mr. Godspower Chimereze, said that the agricultural training was in line with the state agricultural policy.
Idu noted that sustainable agriculture could not be achieved if the rural-urban migration was not reversed as agriculture could only be done in rural communities.
He cautioned the beneficiaries against diverting the money that would be given to them for agriculture.
He stressed that doing such would rob the country of the opportunity to become self-sufficient in food production.
A former beneficiary of the programme, Mr Fidelis Ebunoha, from the Ezeagu area council, said that the knowledge he got from the training in 2019 had helped him to boost his poultry business.
Ebunoha added that his business would not have gone far without the NDE training.
Speaking on behalf of other beneficiaries, Mr. Chris Udenta, thanked the NDE for selecting them for the agricultural training programme.
