… Vows to curb trend through GIS
This implies that over 39 million Nigerians are unemployed. Speaking during an interactive session on Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS) in Abuja, Co-ordinating Minister and Minister of Finance, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said that an average of 1.8 million youths find themselves in the labour market annually out of which about 250,000 to 300,000 are graduates.
She noted that in the first phase of the GIS programme, up to 50,000 unemployed and under-emeployed graduates will be engaged by the end of the 2013 as interns in reputable organisations to build their skills and make them relevant in today’s workplace.
The minister also noted that at least 1000 unemployed graduates will be engaged in every state adding that the programme will be scaled up to 100,000 in the second phase.
According to her, about 1,937 firms have registered for the scheme out of which 1,371 were verified and 293 were approved while 1,078 were rejected for their inability to meet the minimum requirements. As for the interns, 84,772 of them made up of 59,872 males, 24,900 females and 329 physically challenged, applied.
“As at date, only 1,159 interns have been deployed across the country,” she said. For firms to be eligible for the GIS, they must be registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC) and must provide evidence of Value added Tax (VAT) registration and tax clearance certificates.
Also, firms must be prepared to provide a mentoring plan for each intern and interns must be graduates between ages 18 and 40 years and they must have completed the mandatory National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) or be exempted. For the interns, she said, they will be provided an orientation training to prepare them for the workforce.
They are also assigned a mentor in their place of internship to provide direction and support their career development. Above all, the interns get a monthly stipend of N18,000 from the government for 12 months.
Chairman of Subsidy Reinvestment Programme (SURE-P), Dr Christopher Kolade, said that SURE-P is an intervention device to bring relief to those that suffered the hardship of subsidy removal.
39m Nigerians are jobless, says FG
No comments:
Post a Comment