The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) has empowered 26 unemployed persons with equipment for environmental beautification in Imo. The Director-General of NDE, Mallam Abubakar Nuhu-Fikpo distributed the equipment to the beneficiaries in Owerri on Tuesday.
Nuhu-Fikpo, who was represented by the Imo Coordinator of the NDE, Mrs Chisara Egwim-Chima, said that the programme was organised by the Directorate’s Department of Special Public Works (SPW).
He added that the equipment would enable the beneficiaries put the skills they had been taught into practice.
He listed the equipment to include: wheelbarrows, shovels, rakes, trowels, hoes, moulds, water pumping machines, gloves, saws, plums, water hoses, and some cash components.
According to him the equipment would enable beneficiaries practice environmental beautification skills such as hard and soft landscaping, plaster of Paris (POP) and others. “They have been adequately trained and will now be empowered with tools and some cash components.
“In our innovative manner, we introduced distribution of working tools as against cash to mitigate challenges arising from the wrong use of empowerment funds. That is why we are providing more equipment than cash “, Nuhu-Fikpo said.
NDE’s Director of SPW, Mrs Roseline Olaomi said the equipment would be provided as soft loans repayable in cash equivalents at the expiration of a six month period.
Olaomi, who was represented by Mr Kenneth Okafor, congratulated the beneficiaries on a successful completion of the training and charged them to put the skills and loaned equipment to their best use.
He said that the training was aimed at reducing unemployment in the society and eventually produce ripple effects when beneficiaries gradually turn to employers of labour.
One of the beneficiaries, Mr Miracle Onyema, of Ihitte-Uboma council area, thanked the NDE for remembering the unemployed and promised to justify the resources spent in facilitating the empowerment.
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