Unemployment: Ekweremadu Urges FG, States to Invest in Vocational Training Programmes

Christopher Isiguzo in Enugu

Irked by the increasing rate of unemployment in the country, the Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu at the weekend in Enugu asked the federal and state governments to invest in vocational training and skill acquisition programmes in order to meaningfully engage the youths.

Speaking at the inauguration of a vocational training institute, Learn and Work European Vocational School in Enugu, Senator Ekweremadu said the unemployment rate had remained high because of the failure of government to come up with progressive and pragmatic strategies to resolving the challenge.

The European Vocational School is designed to train young people in different skills including web design, plumbing, tailoring/dress making and home nursing among others. The training is packaged to last for six months or 320 hours after which graduates are presented with graduation certificates. The institute, which has Ekweremadu as its promoter, is being managed by the CEPU Education Group, Italy.

Ekweremadu decried a situation where the nation’s tertiary institutions graduate thousands of ‘unemployable people’ annually, noting that the vocational training school had been packaged to fill the yawning gap in the system.

“It’s really unfortunate that we have engineers that can’t construct anything; we have technicians that can’t fix anything; we have plumbers who are just disasters,” he lamented.

Details later…