The Minister of Labour and Employment, Sen. Chris Ngige, has said that the federal government has received 800,000 applications for the 500,000 jobs promised the youth.
Ngige, at the 5th Town Hall Meeting organised by the Federal Ministry of Information in Enugu, advised the people of the South East to explore the opportunity by registering on the web portal.
He said that the jobs were mainly for teaching and skills acquisition as promised by the APC government. He also said that the administration has a good agenda for the unemployed youths irrespective of the current challenges facing it.
The minister said that 100,000 out of the 500,000 to be employed would be trained as agricultural extension workers and deployed to rural areas to assist the farmers with an improved method of farming through the partnership of the ministry of agriculture.
“I want our graduates to register so that they will not say that they are marginalised when people that registered are selected,” he said.
He urged the governors and local government chairmen in the South East to assist their youths in printing the forms as many have expressed difficulty in accessing the portal.
He regretted that youths neglected skills acquisition to chase white collar jobs, adding that most skilled jobs were being done by Ghanaians and people from other neighbouring countries.
Ngige described Igbo youths as enterprising and hardworking and could survive without depending on the government but had neglected their values. He further explained that the current economic hardship the country faced was because the past government neglected agriculture and failed to save for the rainy day.
He admonished the Igbo to come out of the “persecution syndrome,’’ saying that the APC-led government was not marginalising any section of the country.
