BY NAOMI MGBAKOR
NATIONAL Directorate of Employment, NDE, in collaboration with Masterswitch Limited, is training no fewer than 100 unemployed youths in Abuja and Lagos, towards making them self-reliance.

Under the umbrella of the Eazibiz employment scheme, 50 youths each in Lagos and Abuja are to undertake a three-day intensive training on e-banking.

Speaking at the commencement of training for Lagos beneficiaries, Director-General, Mallam Abubarkar Mohammed, the programme was designed as an intervention in Nigeria’s labour market for unemployed persons who had been carefully selected as agents that would drive the project.

Represented by Mr. Nnamdi Udo, Mallam Mohammed said “under the programme payments of various bills ranging from sales/purchase of recharge cards, vouchers, phone e. top-up, transportation tickets and several others will be made easy as physical transfer of funds would not be necessary.

The benefits derivable from the programme include, importantly, job creation for the agents which will of course lead to self-reliance on their part, a philosophy underlying the operations of the NDE.

The operations of the NDE centre around counseling and value re-orientation, skills acquisition training and empowerment of beneficiaries with start-up capital to redress the mismatch between employment generation opportunities and skills acquired through the formal educational system and set up owner managed businesses.”

“The first phase of this programme will cover counseling, value reorientation and training while the resettlement of successful trainees will follow in due course. In line with international best practices, the NDE has extended the frontiers of its focus to modern and emerging skills areas such as ICT etc.

Although the operations of the NDE constitute a major program of minor works, it nevertheless makes a huge impact in the development of the informal sector which has proved to have the largest potential to create jobs and drive the process of industrialization and the much desired economic growth of the country.”

Speaking, NDE’s Director, Small Scale Enterprises Department, Mr. Kunle Obayan,  said the EazyBiz Scheme developed by Masterswitch Limited was created to increase access to financial services.

He said “This would be achieved through delivering financial services to millions of Nigerians on a “Community by Community, Street by Street” basis by agents. Beneficiaries of today’s occasion are agents of the program. An agent would be able to deliver the following services to his/her clients using the Point of Sale (POS) terminal as such as Sales of recharge card vouchers, Automatic phone e-top up without the use of voucher numbers, Debit or credit card acceptor, Facilitate money transfer from person to person or from person to bank account, Lottery ticket dispenser and Issuance of transportation tickets, sports show tickets.”

“The POS terminals accept payments when the phone is used as mobile money wallets. Payment .by (ash is equally registered before disbursement of any of the products and services. This allows for easy accountability. To perform these services, an NDE/EazyBiz agent will have the following:- POS terminal, Solar charger, POS jacket and pouch, Uniform (Protective Clothing with NDE logo), Motorcycle branded with NDE logo (Optional),  Crash helmet,  Luminous Jacket and First aid kit.”