22 February 2017, Sweetcrude, Kaduna – The French Development Agency under the UIMM Project in collaboration with the Association of Nigerian Electricity Distribution Companies, ANED, has indicated readiness to assist Kaduna Electric in knowledge and skills acquisition for its staff.
At a meeting with the management of Kaduna Electric at the company’s headquarters in Kaduna, the Project Manager of the UIMM Project, Agathe Gondinet, said that this was in line with the agency’s mandate to help electricity distribution companies across Nigeria to develop skilled manpower.
According to her: “To achieve this, we have embarked on tour of all the eleven DISCOs, starting with Kaduna Electric, in order to know their training needs and partner with them to design and implement training plans that will be useful in addressing their human development needs”.
Explaining further, she said that the aim of the project “is to support the Human Resources Managers in all the Distribution Companies (DISCOs) in Nigeria so that they will be strengthened and empowered through Train-the-trainer sessions, to design training programs and curricula for their respective companies”.
Ms. Gondinet stated that the two-year project, which has already started, is also going to be developing strategic partnership with both government and private owned training institutes like the National Power Training Institute of Nigeria, NAPTIN, by providing them with both the infrastructure and information on the training needs of the entire sector so that they can adapt their curriculum to meet the current needs of the DISCOs.
She further disclosed that some of the areas in which the downstream sector will benefit will include: change management, bridging the gap between the legacy staff and the newly recruited, appraisal method and access to a digital platform that will serve as a resource center to share ideas on best practices, among several others.
In his contribution, the ANED Project Coordinator, Mr. Rotimi Adebari, was hopeful that the outcome of the Needs Analysis currently being carried out in all the DISCOs with Kaduna Electric being first in the series, would motivate employees and facilitate attitudinal change that will improve industry efficiency.
