In this interview, the director-general of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE), Dr. Mohammed Nasir Ladan Argungu, spoke on the modalities his organisation has put in place to engage poor and vulnerable Nigerians. He also disclosed that some of their trainees are engaged in the production of face masks and hand sanitisers to fight the spread of coronavirus, among other things.
Recently, President Muhammadu Buhari approved the extension of the Special Public Works (SPW) to the 36 states of the federation and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), as well as engagement of 774, 000 young men and women; how would you ensure that the most vulnerable Nigerians benefit from this gesture?
Our mandate in the NDE is to create jobs through skills development. That’s why we are involved in many forms of training and resettlement of those who were trained. Some people get cash backings, some starter packs, while some are empowered with working equipment so that they can be on their own.
This programme is going to be water and air tight. You can’t even have access to the forms. There will be no way to truncate the system. That’s the reason we are engaging some banks we believe are very good in terms of information and communication technology and are widely spread.
We are going to print the whole 774, 000 forms. We are going to use the banks after we screen the beneficiaries across the local governments. Each of them is to collect his form from the branch of the bank within the local government, where they will be registered with their Bank Verification Numbers. No form is going through any individual. We are going to screen these young men and women at the end of the exercise. They are to go to those banks and get their forms. There is no way any form will get across to anybody. We are going to select 1, 000 persons in each of the 774 local governments across the federation.
In February we did a pilot study, where eight states were engaged. There were five local governments in each state and the total number of participants were 40, 000. That was the first approval given to us by Mr. President. They are to be paid N20, 000 for three months. We did in Borno, Edo, Katsina, Ebonyi, Adamawa, Kwara. Because of the success of the pilot studies, Mr. President now decided to make it across all the 774 local governments in the country.
The duties of these young men and women involve cleaning their environments and some critical Federal Government, states and local governments’ infrastructures.
How has the NDE supported government in the fight against COVID-19?
Currently, we have over 80 sewing machines in our skills acquisition centre in Daura, Katsina State, where young men and women are trained. We have already acquired materials. We wrote a letter to the state government and they gave us clearance to work, while observing all the safety measures, including social distancing and the use of thermometer.
We are going to use this opportunity to produce at least 30, 000 face masks. It is the same thing in our skills qcquisition centres in Argungu, Sokoto, Borno and the one in Ekiti; in fact, all our centres across the federation.
Similarly, some of our trainees in Kaduna have started mass production of 25 liters of hand sanitisers. Some of them started with one liter, 500 ml, four liters, and now 25 liters. You can find some of them in shops. So, we are ready to support the government in anywhere necessary.
You paid stipends to over 23, 970 trainees for three months, was it a form of palliative?
The only condition for payment is for you to go to your training centre, at least 20 times a month. Once you fulfill that, we send your money into your account, directly from the government account. But because of the coronavirus pandemic, we decided to pay them in block (three months at a go). It will serve as a sort of palliative to some of them. But we normally pay on a monthly basis.
The payment was to ameliorate the hardship suffered by trainers and trainees of the organisation as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown.
