By Ifeizu Joe
Anambra State Ministry of Women Affairs and Child Welfare has launched a free skills acquisition programme for women and youths in the state.
The ministry said it would train women on various skills as a way to reduce unemployment among women and youths in the state.
The six months programme which will run in batches of 100 participants each will feature training on catering and confectioneries, computer education, hair dressing, cosmetology, tailoring and fashion design and textile craft.
The commissioner for Women Affairs and Child Welfare, Mrs Esther Onyekesi who spoke with THE RAZOR said the idea is to deplete unemployment among women and youths, as she believes that idleness is a major cause of some of the cases she treats daily regarding domestic violence and others.
She said: “When I assumed office, I found out that the ministry has a skill acquisition centre that had almost been abandoned.
“The centre has several functional equipment, so what we did was to see how we can revive training in the centre as this will help many women and young girls to have something to do.
“In this ministry, we treat a lot of cases involving women and youths, and I want to believe that if most of the women whose cases we treat are engaged, some of the matters that bring them to my office will not arise.
“So, the idea is that after treating cases of some of these women, we look for a way to train and empower them, so that they too can be independent.”
She stated that currently, the ministry will be running the training in batches of 100 participants for six months, and that the initiative is solely that of the ministry and totally different from the ‘One youth, Two Skills’ programme sponsored by the state government.
“We know that the governor is currently spending heavily on the one youth two skills programme, so we do not want to burden him with ours. What we are doing is that after our participants have been trained, we will look for good spirited individuals who will sponsor them with equipment that can help them commence their own business.
“The requirement is simple. You just buy a form and we enroll you and you commence training for the batch. The idea is so that our skill acquisition would not lie fallow, while more people will be trained,” she stated.
