Plateau State Chairman of Nigerian Association of Small Scale Industrialists (NASSI), Mr Steven Gondli, has called for capacity building for small and medium-scale entrepreneurs in the State.
He said these entrepreneurs needed thorough and well structured training to build their capacity.
Gondli said, on Wednesday, in Jos, that such training should be thorough and should involve experienced professionals in the sector and others related fields.
He said the training modules should be provided within specific time frame to make the training meaningful and impactful.
Gondli said the involvement of Vice President Yemi Osinbajo in SMEs and introduction of SMEs clinics across the country had stepped up SMEs capacity building processes.
He, however, said that a two-day clinic was not enough for SMEs and that government should do better by changing the approach to address the fundamentals of skill acquisition.
“During the SMEs clinic, we are all lectured for one day, but that is not enough.
“Entrepreneurs should be taught the need to be self employed and need to harness locally available raw material resources, ‘’ he said.
The association chairman said that entrepreneurial skills could not be developed by proxy and that the clinic would only help them to get just a bit of a whole lot.
He said the training would be more effective if the SMEs where grouped and given field talks on the bases of what they majored in so as to really build their capacity.
‘’If it is done sector by sector, it will be very impactful like putting those in food processing in one group, those that are into fabrication in another group and also those in agro-processing in another group,’’ he said.
Gondli advocated for all encompassing training involving professionals and government agents going round to find out the challenges of SMEs and then building structured programmes around their challenges to address them appropriately.
He commended the efforts of the Office of the Vice President for the ongoing SMEs clinics, saying that a structured thorough training would go a long way in helping SMEs build capacity. (NAN)