The Director General, National Directorate of Employment
(NDE) Mallam Abubakar Mohammed, blamed inadequate funding for the directorate’s
inability to execute some of its programmes.

Mohammed  made the
remark in Minna at a National workshop for vocational skills development
officers tagged: “Skills Acquisition Training in an Ever Changing
Environment.’’.

“Inadequate funding has made it impossible for the NDE to
train and empower the number of trainees it had planned for.

“If you have a budget of N1 billion, the release at the end
of the year may be N200 million.

“If we plan to train 2, 000 persons per state in a year, we
may not be able to do that in the end because of the way the funds are
released,’’ he said.

He said the Graduate Attachment Programme (GAP) of the
directorate produced 3, 600 trainees per annum from the 36 states of the
federation and Abuja.

The DG who was represented by the agency’s director of small
scale enterprises, Mr Kunle Obaya, called on the private sector to compliment
federal governments’ efforts in tackling unemployment.

The Niger Commissioner for Religious Affairs and Poverty
Alleviation, Alhaji Shehu Haruna, said that the state government was doing
everything possible to tackle poverty in the area.

He said this was being done through the training of
graduates and non-graduates for employment by government or assisted to set up
private businesses.