15 November 2013, Abuja – The Federal Government on Thursday inducted hundreds of young engineers that would replace old electricity workers currently occupying technical positions in power stations.
A total of 308 engineers were inducted at the ceremony in addition to the 243 engineers that graduated last week from the institute.
The National Power Training Institute of Nigeria inducted the young electrical and mechanical engineers at the event, which was attended by officials from the Federal Ministry of Power, Niger Delta Power Holding Company of Nigeria, the National Assembly, Bureau of Public Enterprises and other key agencies in the power sector.
The Director-General, NAPTIN, Mr. Rueben Okeke, said the training became expedient considering the dearth of qualified manpower in the industry.
He said the NGSDP training would last for one year and expressed confidence that the engineers would excel in discharging their duties in the power business.
According to him, the three groups of specialisation for the programme are power generation, transmission and distribution engineers.
He said, “This initiative recorded the graduation of 243 engineers in generation, transmission and distribution fields on the 7th of November 2013 for the 2012/2013 session.”
He stated that Nigeria’s power sector was filled with “a lot of tired engineers who pretend not to be tired,” adding that the government was aware of this and had decided to train young engineers to take over.
“A great number of them have already secured employment in the power sector with effort being made to absorb all of them,” he said.
Okeke told the inductees and those that recently graduated that the power sector had enough space to accommodate them.
– The Punch