Nigeria Employers’ Consultative Association (NECA) plans to engage some foreign employers of labour with the aim to securing placements for unemployed Nigerian youths with prerequisite competencies.
At the home front, the employers’ organisation is already strategising with some big names, including Dangote Group, Nestle, Guinness, 7Up Bottling Company, Shell, Chi Limited, Jobberman, Trust Fund Pension among others, to create opportunities for young graduates, some of whom have roamed the streets for years.
Timothy Olawale, the Director General of NECA, spoke at the first job fair organised by NECA, in Lagos on Thursday, with the theme “Promoting Employability for National Development.”
According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Nigeria’s unemployment rate stood at 23.1 percent in third quarter of 2018, up from 18.1 percent in 2017. The International Labour Organisation (ILO), similarly estimated youth unemployment in Nigeria in 2018 to be at 20 percent.
Olawale said that the organisation of the job fair, which some 24 employer organisations to interface with hundreds of unemployed youths, is another initiative by NECA towards mitigating the alarming unemployment rate in Africa’s biggest economy.
“We started the technical job scheme in partnership with Industrial Training Fund (ITF). We also started the online modules on how to become entrepreneurs, and now the job fair. He added that NECA would also be opening discussions with employer organisation counterparts during the 2020 ILO international conference in Geneva, Switzerland, for job international job opportunities for Nigerian youths.
Taiwo Adeniyi, acting president of NECA, noted that the job fair is also created to enable the unemployed interact with companies to acquire employability skills. He pointed out that in some cases, jobs are actually available, but the graduates not employable.
JOSHUA BASSEY
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