The Commissioner for Wealth Creation and Employment, Lagos State, Mr. Babatunde Durosinmi-Etti, has reiterated the commitment of the Lagos State Governor, Mr. Akinwunmi Ambode to the empowerment and employment of youths in the state and to the general development of Lagos.
The Commissioner made this statement in Lagos on Monday March 14, 2016, when he joined the meeting of the community journalists.
He was invited by the Special Adviser to the Governor on Communities and Communications, Hon. Kehinde Bamigbetan, to come and shed more light on the recently established Lagos State Employment Trust Fund. According to him, the Ministry of Wealth Creation and Employment was established with the mandate to proffer solution to unemployment and poverty in the state.
Explaining further, the commissioner said that the ministry, which is six months old, had been partnering with the private sector to ensure the employability and entrepreneurship of Lagosians. He said that through the findings of the ministry of Wealth creation and employment, it was discovered that every locality in the five divisions of the state has its own typology of unemployment.
According to Babatunde necessary approached were being applied to address the situation. He said that employment styles for the five divisions had been developed.
Another way of reinforcing the employability of youths, especially the unemployed graduates, as he stated was through retraining them in vocational and skills acquisition process; he said if the mindset of the people is re-orientated, they would prefer to become self-reliant and employers of labour instead of chasing non-existent white-collar jobs.
Hon. Babatunde also hinted that the ministry was on a sensitization tour to all the local governments in the state and that very soon, the technology training programme would be organized for one hundred people to be selected through competitive process across the five divisions of the state.
Concerning the N6.2 billion to be put in place annually for the empowerment of Lagosians, the Hon. Commissioner stated that equal opportunity towards accessing the fund is guaranteed and it is being given a three percent interest rate. He also informed that the ten member Board of Trustees, which include two representatives of Lagos State government, had been inaugurated while the fund is in process.
He assured Lagosians that there was not going to be government interference in the activities of the trustees as the two government representatives are there only to monitor the disbursement of the fund.
According to Babatunde, government is only concerned about how many people that could become employers of labour. To that effect, he said that his ministry is partnering with legislators on the empowerment such as the one organized in Ikorodu by the member of the House of representative, Hon. Jimi Benson. He said that the empowerment programme was on vocational skills acquisition to see how the people could be empowered using their acquired skills.
Earlier, before the commissioner’s arrival, the presiding officer of the meeting, Hon. Kehinde Bamigbetan, had briefed the journalists on some of the latest activities of the state government. He also advised them to buckle up professionally to work for the state, stating that the hard working Governor Ambode, has decided to tour all the local governments in the state, which his special adviser called his first time local government tour.
The Commissioner, however, assured the journalists that the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund was almost at the point of being accessed due to the inauguration of competent hands to handle the disbursement while the procedures to be followed are being tidied up as well.
The meeting with the journalists was brought to an end after they have all given their own locality reports and asked various questions, which the Special Adviser provided answers to