MKPOIKANA UDOMA 17 August 2014, Sweetcrude, Port Harcourt – About 50 graduates in Rivers State are currently undergoing training under a scheme organised by the Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme, SURE-P, in conjunction with the Federal Ministry of Health.The facilitator of the training, Mr. Andrew Obooforibo, told SweetCrudeReports that the training is aimed at exposing participants to the potentials and prospects of the labour market.
He said about 20 percent of 5,000 graduates who have been pencilled down for training across the country have already benefitted from the exercise.
According to him, “What we are here for is to give young graduates and school leavers an opportunity for employment. The internship places them with private companies for the duration of 12 months and it allows them to gain valuable working experience with an opportunity to be retained by those companies if they perform well during that 12 months. It also gives them opportunities to improve their curriculum vitae that might help them get jobs or start their own businesses. We want to make sure that Rivers State sees the dividends of democracy and SURE-P”
Representative of the convener, Mr. Emeka Ekpunobi disclosed that the graduates, who are already attached to various companies in the state for a period of 12 months as part of their internship, are being paid monthly stipends.
“These graduates are being paid N30,000 every month by the Federal Government through SURE-P. We have placed them in different firms and we are hoping to continue with that. We are hoping that the firms they are working with today will employ them and if that doesn’t happen, we also hope that with the skills they must have learnt, they would be able to gainfully engaged themselves”.
Some of the graduates who spoke to SweetCrudeReports, commended the Federal Government for the programme, adding that it has developed their abilities and competence in the labour market.
