Anambra Motor Manufacturing Company Ltd. ANAMMCO, owners of DONGFENG Motor Truck in Nigeria has appealed to government at all levels to reduce unemployment through patronage of locally produced goods.
ANAMMCO is previously known as assemblers of Mercedes Benz trucks in the past, and later moved to assemble Shacman trucks under contract assembly with Transit Support Services Limited, all in the quest to oil the operations of the age-long assembly plant running.
Olakan Sanyaolu, the sales manager, stated this at the auto plant’s vehicle production observation day where Em-power program students posted to ANAMMCO were conducted round the company’s facilities.
ANAMMCO, he said, is capable of employing over 3000 workers out of the employment market in the sense that, it has different departments that can take skilled and unskilled workers in various fields and ready to meet the trucks and buses needs because it has the capacity.
The plant can produce in single shift 7,500 units of trucks and 1000 units of buses, ” so if government can just give us the contract to build buses for Mass-Transit, you can imagine the kind of employment market it will bust open both directly and indirectly based on the fact that it was going to use local material producers”.
He however lamented that instead of giving contracts to indigenous motor assembling and manufacturing companies to create employment and reduce poverty and hardship, government prefer giving out those employment out to Chinese and other foreign countries who in turn returns them here with an increased costs.
“Imagine what will happened if 5000 buses were given to ANAMMCO to produce ,the number of people that would be involved in the production locally, the glass companies, the foams, Rubber, leaders and companies involves in other components would engage workers. Not to talk about those that would be employed directly”.
He lamented that, many technicians in the auto industries are wasting away since most companies folded up and some machines scraped by the companies and many have forgotten the job and look for something else to make a living.
Narrating that some equipments has to be either renovated or the companies go for new ones that are not easy to come by because most machines now have gone digital and computerized.
They called on the government to wake up and do the needful by patronising the local automobile industries saying that ANAMMCO has all the facilities, the experience and capacity to give the country quality products in terms of trucks and busses and on third party arrangement.
Responding on the quality of the product the manager explained that it is what is keeping them in the business despite the fact that every equipment is acquired.” One major thing is that of productive process here and the quality of our product always stands us out”. He said.
He said their tanker and buses last for more than 20 year and that the company pay strick adherence to SON’s rules and regulations.
On why the em-power students are taken round the companies facilities starting from the entry point of SKD to final inspection Godwin Ezeatu, the ANAMMCO institute training manager said that it does not only assemble vehicles, but also trains technicians for both public and private companies .
He said the company has it as a custom to have vehicle observers’ day; a day set aside by by the company for all the new intakes to go round the production departments to observe the process of assembling trucks from chassis to final inspection.
Ezeatu said it was aimed at facilitating learning; it will help the students to know the process of assembling the vehicles, identify major components of motor assembling and also help them differentiate between Completely Knocked Down (CKD) and Fully Built Unit (FBU).
He said that about 100 students on em-power program are taking basic automobile training in ANAMMCO. The students he said would be issued with certificates from NABTEB at the end of the 12 months program. Some of them may be tetained while some would decide to start their own business. This is the 3rd batch of students that have passed through the training institute on Em- Power program.
Regis Anukwuoji
