Ebonyi targets over 200 artisans for skill-up empowerment

[adsense ad_id=”inarticle”]

By Nnamdi Akpa, Abakaliki

All is set for the empowerment of over 200 artisans by Ebonyi State Government through a skills acquisition and entrepreneurial development programme.

The Ebonyi State Commissioner for Skill Development and Job Creation, Mr Okwu Oko-Udu, disclosed this on Friday.

In a chat with journalists in Abakaliki, the commissioner said that Governor Francis Nwifuru has approved the project to skill up artisans to ensure that many of them benefit from the new empowerment scheme.

Oko-Udu stressed that the Ministry in collaboration with the Ministry of Trade and Investment and Commerce and Industry has been making a top effort to establish an Industrial City in Ezzamgbo in Ohaukwu LGA of Ebonyi State.

He said the industrial city has been approved by Nwifuru to be used for the training and empowerment of artisans, adding that the state government would offer free shops to the beneficiaries of the programme to ensure close assessment of their progress in their trades in the site.

He praised Governor Nwifuru’s administrative policy drive to reverse the stigma of viewing Ebonyi people as those who appreciate hawking comes to an end through the empowerment scheme.

“The way the Governor considers that most of our brothers and sisters who are in hawking businesses, still need to be brought back home and you know what happened in Lagos where our brothers and sisters were stranded after their shops and trade centres were destroyed in recent times,” he said.

“The ministry has visited some skills acquisition centres that are already moribund and most of them have already dilapidated but the governor gave us the mandate and we have done that by visiting the one at Nkwegu in Abakaliki LGA, the one at Izzi, and seeing the situation.”