The Director General of The Industrial Training Fund, Dr Oluwatoyin Ogun has urged the stakeholders in ITF to support the proposed amendment bill on the Act.
He made this plea while addressing journalists when he appeared before the House of Representatives Committee on Industry on a bill for an Act to amend ITF Act 2011, in Abuja on Wednesday.
Stressing that the proposed amendment is not tending towards making new laws but essentially, enriching the ITF mandate, ensuring that the Industrial Training Fund is repositioned, well-funded and equipped to establish more industrial and model skills training centers, in addition to the ones currently being run in Lagos, Kano, Abuja and Jos and thus primed to fulfill its core mandate of providing the necessary training, skills acquisition and vocational know-how, essential for today’s knowledge-based economy and the Nigeria of our dreams.
He also opined that the amendment will drastically reduce the population of our youths in the unemployment bracket, arrest the rising national insecurity, by offering our teeming young men and women, the opportunity to unleash their potentials and redirect their energies positively, which will undoubtedly translate into economic growth and all-
round development for our country.
Oluwatoyin said, “We are not making new laws. We are enriching our mandate in ITF. The mandate are there, go to the mandate and read the mandate. Most people that talked here today have not read the mandate. Please go back as pressmen and read the mandate. I have read their mandate but I want them to read our mandate. You the media, go and read my mandate – ITF mandate.
“The law that sets up ITF, our goal is to make Nigeria work and work again. Our goal is to pursue the renewed hope agenda and we are doing that. And the president has told us, go out, up skill this artisan. It is getting embarrassing to say there is no job in Nigeria.
“For the avoidance of doubt, there is job in Nigeria. If there is no work in Nigeria, Ghanaians will come here, Lebanese will come here, Togolese will come here, they take up the job and abandoned become millionaire and go back to their country to enjoy there millions, yet we say there is no job. It is time for us to take up the jobs. The problem we have, we have substandard, sub-quality jobs and we are scaling that up, come what may.
“When we started, the artisans,they are happy with us because we are carrying them along. They told me at the beginning, people will fight you. There will be stumbling block on the way, I told them, I am ready to be baked and when I come out of the baking fire, I will be done and I will be ready for the agenda of Mr. President. I am ready to push it to success, he said.
The Industrial Training Fund was established by Decree 47 of 1971, now an Act as amended in 2011. It’s to develop the nation’s human resource capacity by continuous training and retraining of its workforce for optimum output and performance. To achieve this, the IF provides key services such as research, development of training programmes, administration of the Students Industrial Work Experience Schemes
(SIWES), collection of training contributions as mandated by law from liable organizations and payment of reimbursement, after such organizations have provided evidence of such training, in order to encourage employers to consistently train their
employees for greater productivity.
