‘This Govt Committed To Youth Empowerment, Skills Devt’

The Enugu State government is committed to promoting youth empowerment through skills development.

Special Adviser to the Governor on Digital Economy and Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) Mr. Arinze Chilo-Offiah  stated this yesterday.

Chilo-Offiah  who is also the Director General of the Enugu Small & Medium Enterprises (SME) Centre spoke during a strategic engagement and sensitisation campaign.

Addressing participants who included key officials from Nigeria Educational Loans Fund (NELFUND) and the Enugu State Government, he said:

“We just wanted to show them the world class facilities we have here to let NELFUND know that we are ready to key into the skills acquisition component of the fund.

“One component is to take care of school fees and upkeep of tertiary institution students, the other aspect is vocational skills.

“We just came from the Government Technical College (GTC) revamped world-class facilities there, we are also showing them our fashion hub.

“As you can see, Enugu is ready to absorb all the support from NELFUND. They will be able to provide us with zero-interest loans for training in fashion.”

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“We have about 150 industrial sewing machines here, we have world-class monogramming machines. We can sit at any given point in time, 300 plus or closer to 500,” he said

Earlier, NELFUND had announced it would begin expanding its loan scheme to cover vocational and skills acquisition centres beginning with Enugu State.

This is even while NELFUND’s Executive Director of Operations, Mr. Iyal Mustapha, hailed Enugu as having one of the best skills development facilities in the country.

Sawyer said the feat had earned the state a slot for the pilot phase of the programme, expected to further boost its potentials on youth empowerment particularly and skills development generally.