Gombe Govt To Empower 930 Women And Youths

By Kalshingi H Jedidah

Gombe State Government said it has embarked on the training of 930 youths and women on skills acquisition programmes with a view to empower them and foster economic growth of the state.

While Flagging-off the training programme in Gombe the state capital, Governor, Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo who was represented by Commissioner Ministry of Economic Planning, Alhaji Danladi Pantami said the state government in collaboration with United Nations Development Programmes (UNDP) organised the training with a view to reduce level of poverty among the women and youth in the state.

He said the state government had paid N162 million counterpart contribution for the delivery of all the components of the UNDP assistance to the state.

According to him, each beneficiary would be provided with feeding and training allowance during the period of the training as well as resettlement kits for the trade they would be acquiring.

Governor Dankwambo further explained that in order to ensure success of the program, 78 (48 men and 30 women) master trainers were also trained  to train the beneficiaries at various Women Development Centres within the state.

Mr. Pa-lami Beyai, Country Director UNDP who was represented by Conflict Prevention and Peace Building Analyst, Mr. Matthew Alao said that the training would last five weeks, depending on the trade areas of the beneficiaries.

He said that trainees would be trained on 10 different skills such as tailoring, welding and metal fabrication, Computer operation, GSM repairs, Aluminum fabrication, Carpentering, Tie and dye among other trades.

He urged Gombe government to design a robust monitoring and evaluation tools to monitor and evaluate the program and to turn skill acquisition centres and Women Development centre to be viable business centres for both public and private sectors economy in the state.

“I also encourage state government to provide post training support, in terms of take-off grant and equipments to each beneficiaries so that they can establish their own up on graduation”, he said.

Hajiya Sa’adatu Mustapha, Commissioner Ministry of Women Affairs and Social Welfare, represented by the ministry’s Permanent Secretary, Alhaji Bappa Mohammed appealed to the master trainers to ensuring proper training of beneficiaries in order to justify the resources put into the program.

She also told beneficiaries to be attentive during training and understand that the program is meant to empower them to be self-reliant as well as to assist others afterwards. The 930 beneficiaries are made up of 600 youths and 330 women.