By Bimbola Oyesola
The Organised Private Sector (OPS) has called for more support from the Federal Government to mitigate the rising unemployment in the country.
The Nigeria Employers Consultative Association (NECA) which expressed concern at the growing unemployment rate as released by the National Bureau of Statistics on Tuesday, said that in order to stem the tide of this downward slope, government must refocus its efforts at supporting organised businesses to increase theirproduction capacity.
The Director General of NECA, Timothy Olawale, said such step will invariably enable members of the OPS to create more jobs.
“Real and verifiable support should be given to MSMEs to enable growth from bottom up and a critical impact-audit of current interventions made to determine their effectiveness and relevance in the context of current realities,” he said.
Olawale stated that the recently released data by the NBS is both worrisome and expected.
According to him, while the figure showed that the unemployment crisis is worsening at an alarming rate, it is also instructive to note that the socio-economic factors that increased the figure to 27.33 per cent in the last NBS release still remain.
He averred that though government has put in place several initiatives to ameliorate the challenges, the fundamental issues arising from COVID-19 and its negative effects on businesses have not been addressed sufficiently.