NDE To Boost Employment Generation

The National Directorate of Employment (NDE) said on Monday in Kaduna that it would boost employment generation by promoting agricultural practice in the country.

The NDE Director-General, Alhaji Muhammad Abubakar , ,, disclosed this at the opening of the Train-the-Trainers Workshop for Rural Employment Promotion Officers.

Abubakar, represented by the Director Rural Employment Promotion Department, Usman Kadira, , said that the intervention was aimed at creating employment in the agricultural sector of the economy.

He said that the training would acquaint NDE field officers with the relevant innovations and improved technologies in agricultural production.

He added that the training was also in line with the priority accorded the agricultural sector to enhance food production and reverse import dependency.

Abubakar, however, observed that the sector was bedevilled by limited application of modern technologies, low skill base, the lack of credit facilities and limited farm infrastructure.

He further noted that the sector was also characterised by poorly developed markets with unstable and unfavourable price regime and called of a reversal of the trend.

“To accelerate and sustain growth in the sector, there is the need for the aforementioned constraints to be properly addressed to move the agriculture away from comparative agricultural production to competitive production,” the director-general said.

In his remarks, Gov. Patrick Yakowa said that enhancing agricultural undertakings was one of the top priorities on the state’s developmental agenda.

Yakowa, who was represented by the Commissioner for Special Duties, Mr Ali Kalat, urged the NDE to link up with the state’s Ministry of Agriculture and the Kaduna Agricultural Development Project (KADP), to help disseminate gains of the training to the grassroots.

The training was organised for field officers from the 36 states and FCT, in conjunction with Admiral Environmental Care Ltd, Kaduna, an NGO.