News: FG to Empower 50,000 Graduates in 2015 - Graduate Internship Scheme (GIS)

The Federal Government has stated that it will empower 50,000 graduates by the year 2015, with quality work experience under the Graduate Internship Scheme, GIS.

GIS is one of the Social Safety Net (SSN) projects of the Subsidy Reinvestment and Employment Programme (SURE-P).

Speaking at a SURE-P forum in Lagos, Dr. Peter Papka, Project Director, GIS, said the Federal Government aims to provide Nigerians with quality temporary work experience that will make them stronger candidate for job opening in the labour market through one year internship placement.

According to him, the programme also aims at engaging not only the youth but also encouraging firms to come and appreciate the opportunity that the scheme has to offer.

Papka said government is creating a platform where these graduates will go into organizations; acquire the right kind of skill that will make them employable by the firms themselves or other business enterprises.

He said, "Basically, it is to help improve on the skill that a graduate require to make him an individual with a difference and to be sure that within this one year the graduate is efficiently skilled and empowered to go and be on its own and to be employed”

He added that in this instance, Government is no employer of Labour, but what government seeks to do is to create enabling environment for the private sector to do business and to deal with issue of unemployment in the country.

He however said that for any firm to be part of the scheme, they must be legitimately registered, making sure they are doing the legitimate business in terms of manpower, having facilities at disposal where graduate can be able to acquire proper skill.

He maintained that they are putting in place online employability skill training, saying that, "we have discussed with stakeholders in the different sector of the economy to agree on the kind of skill that these individual can be trained on and once they have run the online training, they are certified".

Source: Vanguard