Dangote creates additional 28,000 jobs with New Truck scheme

A truck ownership scheme, newly introduced by the Dangote Group, is expected to create additional 28,000 new jobs. The scheme will empower qualified Nigerians to become self-employed truck entrepreneurs.    

Dangote Group, through its cement subsidiary, will provide a minimum of 7000 trucks for eligible Nigerians to become truck officers who will in turn hire drivers and a minimum of two assistants, who will be driving the trucks to deliver Dangote cement to its distributors spread across the country.

A statement from the Company said; “we have 7,000 trucks to share with intelligent, hardworking and committed individuals with business acumen who would like to deepen their entrepreneurial skills in the transport/haulage business, willing to manage and operate a truck, if necessary by appointing their own driver (who should pass the institutional screening, orientation and training process).

The package, the Group said include total support for the benefiting entrepreneurs, through provision of first class maintenance support, fuel and other resources available at its facilities.

To be qualified for the scheme, Dangote explained that, each applicant must be professional, who must ensure at all times the availability of his/her truck for loading at the plant level and off-loading at the customer/depot locations, which is to serve with excellence all of our cement customers with our product.

While the would-be entrepreneurs must be a graduate, the truck drivers need not be a graduate and both would work together to ensure the success of the new product delivery strategy.

“To become a bonafide owner of the truck, among other considerations, the truck entrepreneur must have logged a minimum of 400,000 km. On meeting the mileage target, a nominal amount will be paid by the truck entrepreneur and this amount will be provided to the truck driver who would have assisted the truck entrepreneur in meeting this target, the money will represent a discharge payment to the driver.

“Any driver so discharged above can again apply and be engaged to work with another truck entrepreneur”, the Group added.

By this, Dangote said it was up-scaling the quality of its customer service delivery and then take the advantage of this new strategy to create jobs for teeming jobless Nigerian.

Just last week, the President of the Group opened its Cement plant in Ethiopia during which he charged governments at all levels to see job creation and poverty alleviation as the potent means of improving the standard of living of African people.

He also stated that only African can rise up to the economic challenges of Africans better than foreigners and therefore the need to ensure the growth of the real sector by providing the enabling environment to thrive.

Dangote, had at another forum in Lagos recently explained that his foray into petrochemical and agric industrial sub sector was part of his own contribution to reduce unemployment in the country, saying if more Nigerians are economically empowered through gainful employment, the poverty would have been reduced to a minimal level.

Dangote who has ventured into the construction of refinery and establishment of fertilizer plants in parts of the country, said the task of reinvigorating the nation’ s economy rests more on the shoulders of the private sector and urged other investors to lend government a helping hand in this direction.

According to him, the task of government is more of providing the enabling environment for the private sector to thrive through the right policies and infrastructural provisions.

He stated that he was optimistic that the present federal government would focus on those issues that would help the private sector perform optimally, noting that no government anywhere has ever succeeded without the input of the private sector.

Dangote still urged the government not to relent in helping the Organised Private Sector (OPS) by intervening in other areas of their operations in which the inclement climate under which they operate has hampered them from attaining installed capacities.