Director-General/Chief Executive of the Industrial Training Fund, ITF, Sir Joseph Ari, said that in its efforts at curbing spiraling unemployment which has bedeviled Nigeria in recent times, the parastatal trained not less than 300,000 Nigerians in 2018 under its various programmes.
Ari, represented by  the Calabar Area Manager of ITF, Mrs. Ifeyinwa Anozie, during an interaction with journalists in Calabar, said that  ITF’s mandate included, providing, promoting and encouraging acquisition of skills in industry and commerce with a view to generating a pool of indigenous trained manpower sufficient to meet the need of private and public sectors of Nigeria’s economy.
The ITF boss said,”In order to stem the spiraling unemployment, drive President Muhammadu Buhari’s job creation efforts, and address the specific gaps revealed by the Skills Gap Survey, the ITF came up with a list of implementable programmes for year 2018.
“The programmes included: National Industrial Skills Development Programme (NISDP), Women Skills Empowerment Programme (WOSEP), Air-conditioning Empowerment and Refrigeration (Training on Wheels), Designing and Garment Making (Training on Wheels) for Nigerian youths, Skills Training and Empowerment Programme for the Physically Challenged (STEPPS-C) amongst others.
“Together, the programmes trained about 300,000 Nigerians that were all empowered with start-up packs. About six hundred indigenes of Cross River State were trained under the National Industrial Skills Development Programme (NISDP) and the Women Skills Empowerment Programme (WOSEP).
The ITF boss maintained that the commitment to skills acquisition for job creation did not distract the Fund from other key responsibilities like research and curriculum development, reimbursements and development of key infrastructure.”
On how the organisation got revenue to fund its programme, the federal government, the ITF boss said  the Act establishing the Fund  made provision for companies and multinational businesses operating in Nigeria to pay one percent of their staff annual emolument to ITF to fund its activities but that 50 percent of such deductions are paid back to such companies at the end of each financial year.