Driven essentially by its commitment to empower the Nigerian youth, RLG Communications, has taken 150 trainees from the first batch of the RLG Communications Nigeria Limited and Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme Technology (OYESTECH) partnership programme to Accra, Ghana on a 30 days training, appraisal and capacity building programme. The company has also said that its plant in Osun State, when completed and commissioned at the end of this month, will be producing about 1.5 million laptops a year.
Taiwo Latilo, chief operating officer of RLG Communications, who explained that the training is about empowering the youths, and the first batch from Osun State, was a pilot test, adding that the firm’s plant is 85 per cent completed. He stated that 5,000 people had already completed a six-month training in Osun State and out of that, 150 were going to Accra for further training in the Ghana Assembly plant. Latilo assured that barring unforeseen circumstances, the company intended to start operations in the plant by the end of June 2013 and some of the trainees would work at the plant assembling phones, TV sets, and computer appliances.
He added, “those who do not get employed at the assembling plant would work as sales, technical and operational staff in Osun and Lagos.” One of the trainees of the programme and also the best graduating trainee, Akinola Musibau, said he became aware of the programme through an advert on the radio by the Osun Youth Empowerment Scheme Technology (OYESTECH), which said prospective candidates only needed a minimum of O’level qualifications, so he decided to apply and was lucky to get shortlisted.
He said “every successful candidate was required to pay N10, 000 acceptance fee and N80, 000 course fee”, but he was only able to pay N30, 000 out of the required N90,000 due to financial limitations but thanked God that despite the setbacks, he was still able to emerge the best student in his centre and said the media coverage and cash prize would act as a motivation for him to always put his best in whatever ventures he embarked on. The COO revealed that the company was already in discussion with the state governments of Imo, Benue, Gombe, Cross Rivers and Akwa Ibom to introduce the empowerment and local content initiative to their states.
According to Latilo, the partnership agreement between the company and the Osun State government was for a two-year period within which 20,000 people would be trained on actual repairs, servicing, maintenance and assembling of mobile phones, computers technologies (desktop and laptop) and other electronic equipment. “The batch of 150 people that have left for Ghana is from the first batch of 5,000. The second batch for 5,000 trainees is expected to commence in June 2013 to last another six months and another 5,000 would follow suit until we have completed the 20,000,” he explained.
According to him, the assembling plant in Osun would be the best in Nigeria and would be able to produce a minimum of 1.5 million laptops in a year.
