The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) has started a three-month training for 25 unemployed graduates in solar power installation and maintenance in Bauchi State.
Mr Lawan Yaya, the state Coordinator of NDE, said this in Bauchi on Friday at the end of a five-day orientation for the beneficiaries.
According to him, the training is carried out under the Solar Energy Training Scheme (SETS) of the NDE.
He added that the training was collaboration between the NDE and Abuja Graduate School.
Yaya, who explained that the exercise commenced on Monday, noted that the trainees would be sent to master trainers for proper practical and on-the-job training skills for three months.
He said that Malam Abubakar Fikpo, the NDE Director-General, was passionate about the unemployed graduates in the country, hence the various self-sustenance training initiated by the organisation to address unemployment in the country.
“The objective of the training is to develop skills’ service personnel in solar energy procurement, installation and maintenance and to use infrastructure deficit to provide power for small businesses, homes, and streetlights, among others.
“They will be taught also how to maintain inverters, how to install the panels, maintain the batteries and how to do the connections before going to the field with their master trainers.
“NDE wants to reduce the number of unemployed youths, especially, the teeming graduates who are redundant and sitting at home doing nothing because government jobs are hard to come by these days,” he said.
Yaya also explained that the beneficiaries would be given resettlement packages after the training and N15,000 each as transportation allowance for the period of three months.
He advised them to be punctual, listen attentively and be good ambassadors of the NDE and to the teeming youth in general.
Abubakar Lawal, who spoke on behalf of the trainees, expressed appreciation to the Federal Government and the NDE for the gesture.
He assured them that the beneficiaries would make effective use of the knowledge they would acquire so that they would soon become employers of labour. (NAN)
