Candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the forthcoming September 19 governorship election in Edo State, Osagie Ize-Iyamu, says policies and programmes in his ‘SIMPLE’ agenda are projected to create over 70,500 jobs within a period of fours years.
The SIMPLE agenda is an acronym that stands for Security, Infrastructural development, Manpower development, Public Private Partnership, Leadership and Employment creation.
Ize-Iyamu said if elected governor, the jobs will be created in education, agriculture and rural development, housing, electrification, fire service, industrialisation, waste management system, employment creation and social empowerment, and water supply sector.
He made the disclosure during a stakeholders meeting with journalists at the weekend in Benin City.
The governorship candidate gave the breakdown of the jobs to be created in each sector to include 2,000 direct jobs in electricity-dependent industries and assistance in creating over 1,000 new businesses in rural areas.
He said in water supply, not less than 10,000 new construction jobs will be created and over 3,000 jobs safeguarded over a four-year period while over 3,000 new jobs will be generated from fire service and 5,000 existing jobs will be safeguarded in the sector.
The APC candidate posited that in the housing sector 10,000 additional new construction-related jobs are projected to be added to the state economy and 10,000 sustainable new jobs in the education sector.
He further said 3,000 additional direct jobs and the sustenance of over 5,000 related jobs are projected to be added to the state economy through resuscitation and revamping of state-owned moribund industries.
Ize-Iyamu explained that over 10,000 physically challenged and economically disadvantaged persons will be empowered in the first one year in the micro credit scheme to be set up by the government.
On employment creation and social empowerment programme, the APC candidate said over 3,000 direct and 5,000 indirect jobs are projected to be generated by service providers in the waste management system under the Public- Private Partnership industrial schemes.
According to him, the goal of SIMPLE agenda is to generate jobs from programmes, projects and activities in each of the 18 local government areas.
“For the Public-Private Partnership industrial schemes in each of the senatorial districts, it is reckoned that each of the clusters should be capable of accommodating up to 10 separate industrial firm and would give direct employment opportunities to well over 3,000 persons and another 5,000 persons indirectly, providing the raw materials, goods and services across the state.
“It is also planned to attract over 5,000 persons to the Farm Settlement, while at the same time, Youth Empowerment through Agricultural and Farmer’s Support Programme (YETA-FSP) will be established to support 500 youths from each of the 18 LGAs every year.
“Our government will partner with stakeholders, banks and financial institutions to resuscitate and revamp the state-owned industries including the fertilizer plant, Auchi, Cassavita industry, Uromi, Ava cement factory, Akoko-Edo, fruit juice factory, Ehor, Bendel Brewery, Benin City and Ewu flour mill among others,” he said.
