NDE trains 2,000 on skills acquisition in Edo

Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki. AFP PHOTO / PIUS UTOMI EKPEI

As part of Federal Government’s effort to sustain job creation interventions and reduce poverty, the Edo State Office of the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) has commenced training of at least 2,000 persons on skills acquisition. 

NDE State Coordinator, Ayo Edegbai disclosed this to newsmen during its orientation/induction course for the 74,400 jobs creation programme (B-NOAS) in Edo. 
 
He said the training was designed to consolidate NDE’s effort to sustain employment generation interventions and poverty reduction endeavours and demand driven skills. 
 
She noted that skills acquisition was a major instrument for empowering citizens to access decent and productive employment.

“The NDE has affected over 100,000 persons in Edo State of which many are employed and others on self employment,”Edegbai said. 
 Edegbai stressed that the skill acquisition training for participants is to enable them to actively participate in the socio-economic development of the country to reduce unemployment and poverty.

Meanwhile, a group, Edo Women Development Initiative (EWDI) has called on the governments at all levels to take their services to its citizens in the rural areas which they said was one of making them have a sense of belonging.

It stated this at Umegbe in Oredo local government area where it had a free medical services for the people of the community.

It’s president, Dr. Rosaline Okosun, in company of several other members of the association, said the EWDI was committed to giving selfless service to the people particularly in the area of health and urged other NGOs to collaborate and give better life to rural dwellers.

She remarked: “Part of the objective is to reach out to rural women and children, we started our medical outreach last year, and we discovered that this community is supposed to be part of Ward II, GRA that some people are living in affluence in GRA but in Iyekogba, they are living in abject poverty so we decided to take a tour here and I was really touched by what I saw so we decided to do something for the women and children but as you can see, men are also here.

“When we did it at Upper Sokponba, we discovered that many of these women are hypertensive and some of them were diabetic that is why were frequent stories of “she wasn’t sick but she just died” whereas she was just a walking corpse so we need to do a lot and I call on other NGOs to partner with different communities and provide health services for communities.

The government cannot do it all alone but we can do it together and reach out. We tasked ourselves and we got support from other individuals and we hope to get sponsorship from pharmaceutical companies later in the year and we will come back here and to other communities. We also got support from our medical women association and our young female doctors and I hope government will be able to give them jobs because each time we call them, they are always willing to help us. We also have nurses, medical lab scientists all giving out their time pro bono”

To the enogie (duke) of the community, HRH Anthony Osayimerie Osagie, the free outreach could not have come at a better time even as he called on the government to equp the two health centres in the community. One built sixteen years by Oredo and the built by a lawmaker six years ago. “I am very happy that it is happening here. I thank this Edo Women Development Initiative I thank the, for this gesture. We in this area, it is difficult for us to access Benin City to go for treatment in government hospitals, some of them don’t even have money to go take care of themselves but I thank this group for coming to our community to give us free health services to our people and what they are doing here now is free of charge, the drugs are free, the treatment is free.