Our Burden? to Reduce Mass Poverty

from All Africa

This Day (Lagos)

NEWS

By Seriki Adinoyi
Lagos

The Industrial Training Fund (ITF), a foremost human development organisation, providing dynamic need-based and quality-driven intervention for industrial skill training and development in Nigeria, has of recent made some remarkable landmarks in the control of standard of excellence and effectiveness. It has offered direct training for professionals, technicians, technologists and entrepreneurs to meet the human resource needs for rapid industrialisation and sustainable economic development of the country.

The fund has effectively managed the students of Institution of higher learning through Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) to bridge the gap between theory and practice of education.

Capacity building through Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), National Economic Empowerment Development Strategies (NEEDS) analysis, development and implementation of tailor-made training programmes are encompassed in its enormous duties.

The fund also has a duty to develop vocational technical skills through systemic National Apprentice Scheme and Youth Self Employment Training Schemes to alleviate poverty among the masses.

Whereas, the training fund established by section 4 of decree 47 of 1971, has these enormous responsibilities, and even more, it was in the past rocked with internal crises, in which the staff left their primary duties and engaged in writing petitions against its management. They had complained bitterly that the management of the Fund had rubbished their career and welfare matters and further relegated hem to the background, therefore resorting to petition writing.

The management responded by cracking down on the petitioners. Many of the staff were transferred far away from their families to satellite offices where their services were not even required, yet they wrote more petitions.

This did not just breed more enemies within the fund, but also reduced its productivity, as many were redundant, while others lost their zeal for their duties.

This continued until the present Director General, Dr. Longmas Sambo Wapmuk an associate professor came in and immediately turned around the fortune of the fund for good. He did not just reconcile the aggrieved parties, but also looked into their welfare, addressing the fifteen percent review of their salaries. This development brought life into the workforce of the fund, even as those who were transferred to remote places.

Various sensitisation seminars are now being organised for staff whose zeal has been rekindled. Last July, a SERVICOM sensitisation seminar was held at its Centre for Excellence in Bukuru. At the event, Wapmuk urged the staff to ponder on how well they've fared in quality service delivery to their clients as a corporate body and as individual member of the workforce. He further charged them to reflect on the true statement of the former head of state, President Obasanjo, when he said, "Public offices are the shopping floors for government business. Regrettably Nigerian have for too long been feeling short changed by the quality of service delivery by which decisions are not made without being pushed by inducement. Our public offices have for too long been showcases for the combined evil of bribery and corruption, whilst being impediments to effective implementation of government policies. Nigerian deserve better"

The new ITF has also been restructured with the reduction in the number of departments from nine to six, such that the brief of the fund has been deepened and further refined, with addition of units like the oil and gas and micro small scale. With 27 area offices in the country, and three training centres, the fund has been able to bridge the gap between the people and the public.

In a restructuring and change seminar organised in last September, the Director General said, "very few organisations have emerged out of such a vast overhaul stronger and more virile. That the fund is still waxing stronger and vigorously performing its duties, with great enthusiasm, is a testimony to the strength, will and professionalism of all the staff.

ITF intend to establish a total of 15 additional skill-training centres through out the country. But unlike the existing ones, the new centres will cater for specialist skills where they are most needed. For instance, a skill centre would be established in the South-South to cater for skill requirements in oil and gas sector, while another will be established to cater for skill requirement in fabrication in the Southeast.

In order to effectively discharge its duties and as part of measures towards to strengthen the small and medium scale enterprises through appropriate and need-based capital interventions, some staff of the fund have been given priority attention with long and short-term training in various fields like GSM repairs.

The fund said it intend to sponsor more for local and oversea training in oil and gas, agriculture and others. According to Wapmuk, the best-conceived plans could go awry in an environment without discipline; a reason he constantly charges his staff to reciprocate the good gesture with hard work and dedication to duty.