Thursday, August 29, 2013

Over 40 million Nigerians are jobless – SURE-P

Chairman, Subsidy Reinvestment and Employment Programme, Christopher Kolade, yesterday disclosed that no fewer than 40 million Nigerians are unemployed.

Kolade stated this through the Technical Assistant to Community Services, Women and Youth Employment, SURE-P, Emeka Ekpunobi, at a one-day stakeholders sensitisation programme on Graduate Internship Scheme, organized by SURE-P and Kalends Consulting in Ado-Ekiti, Ekiti State capital.

According to him, the SURE-P was a program through which the Federal Government created with the aim of reducing the rate of unemployment in the country.

He said, "Issue of job creation is a very critical one which over the years has posed great challenge to governments at different levels.



"It was in recognition of this that President Goodluck Jonathan mandated SURE-P to marshal out intervention programmes to address this challenge.

"Through the GIS, we have the mandate to create 50,000 jobs. This sensitisation workshop is very important to us because it is part of our commitment to ensure that the GIS achieves the objectives for which it was set up.

"One of the objectives is to make most Nigerians graduates employable through training and mentoring."

He confirmed the view of the Project Director of GIS, Mr. Peter Parka, that 40million Nigerians required employment.

Parka had said, "National Bureau of Statistics in 2011 indicated that 23.9per cent of Nigerians were unemployed. This means that about 40million Nigerians need employment.

"Government is concerned about this high unemployment rate and is doing everything possible to reverse it. The challenge of graduate unemployment is the inability to absorb the nearly 300,000 graduates churned out by our tertiary institutions each year."

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