The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) has commenced an orientation programme for 1,680 Taraba youths under President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Empowerment Initiative in Taraba.

The director-general of NDE, Silas Agara, declared the orientation open on Friday in Jalingo.

Mr Agara said the 1,680 persons were part of the 93,731 renewed hope employment initiative by the NDE in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation.

The DG, represented by Chris Bamsida, Taraba coordinator of NDE, stated that the beneficiaries were drawn from the 168 electoral wards across the 16 local government councils of Taraba.

“The current employment initiative has been designed to engage a total of 93,731 unskilled and unemployed persons across Nigeria.

“We have ensured that a minimum of 10 beneficiaries from each of the 8,809 electoral wards in Nigeria were recruited to benefit from the 30 skill sets for four programmes.

“The four programmes include vocational skill development, small-scale enterprises, rural employment promotion, and the special public works department,” he said.

Mr Agara said all beneficiaries registered through the online portal, which enabled the employment to have a credible database.

He noted that 40,000 out of the 93,731 persons would receive ICT and digital skills training as a deliberate step to equip Nigerian youths with engineering skills to enable them to become globally competitive.

The DG commended Muhammudu Dingyadi, the Minister of Labour and Employment, and Nkeiruka Onyejiocha, the Minister of State, Labour and Employment, and the supervising Minister for NDE, for their support.

He assured the beneficiaries that they would be provided with starter packs after the three-month training to enable them to create jobs.

Members of civil society organisations, security agencies, academia, and the media graced the flag-off ceremony. 

(NAN)