….Trains 5000 on different skills
By: Felix Ikpotor
The Hydrocarbon Pollution Remediation Project, HYPREP, has assured that the ongoing Ogoni clean-up and environmental remediation exercise will benefit youths of the area.
Project Coordinator of HYPREP, Professor Nenibarini Zabbey who spoke at an engagement meeting with youths of Ogoniland in Port Harcourt, said the project is youths and women centred.
He also disclosed that the agency is currently training 5000 Ogoni youths in different skill areas to enable them fit into the job specifications on the project and beyond.
Zabbey while calling on youths in the area to shun violence and support the exercise, vowed to ensure that the project is done according to United Nations Environment Programme , UNEP, specifications and to give Ogoni the best.
“The Project is community-based. It’s human-centric and the Ogoni youths are key stakeholders and an overwhelming percentage of workers on all our project sites are youths, so the youths are primary beneficiaries of the clean-up of Ogoniland.
“It’s necessary for youths to take advantage of opportunities available for the project and protect them.
“As we speak, we are training 5000 youths and women in 20 different skill areas and that training is going on well and the feedback we are getting from the field is very encouraging. We are committed to the training and we are committed to ensuring that clean up benefits the youths of Ogoni as much as possible and by the end of the training, a critical mass of the youths will have the requisite skills not just to work in Ogoni but to be able to work elsewhere.
“We are planning skills in the digital economy such as cyber security and others. We have also discovered key skills to support oil and gas especially now that the oil companies are divesting from onshore to the deep sea and that is commercial diving and underwater welding; all that has been articulated and we are going to present them to the Governing Council for consideration and approval so we are serious about the issue of livelihood,” Zabbey said.
The Project Coordinator also highlighted other areas where youths and women have been engaged.
“We are also here to build capacity. So apart from the 5000 youths that are undergoing our training, we are also building the capacity of Ogoni youths in different skill areas, we have trained 90 youths and women in mangrove restoration and we have empowered them with catalytic funds to set up their nurseries and if you go to Bomu shoreline you will be very impressed with what they have done with the grant we provided them.
“For our remediation works on the 39 medium risks remediation sites, we trained almost 2000 Ogoni youths who are supporting the remediation process, so all these training are useful because they are hands-on trainings.
“For the Centre of Excellence, the contractor, CCECC has told us that in the course of constructing that centre, about 800 Ogoni youths would be engaged.
“In Tai, we are building the One-Hundred Specialist Hospital in Kpite and the construction is going to provide jobs for many persons, so despite where our projects are located, every part of Ogoni is included in our selection of workers and in all opportunities that are available in the project.
“We also have 40 water project sites that we are building in phase 1 and youths are working there and others, so even students of architecture, quantity survey, land survey, electrical and mechanical engineering, civil engineering of the Ken Saro-Wiwa Polytechnic can benefit from them as practical centres. All these we are doing and we’ll continue to do more and and be rest assured that we will priorities the interest of our youths, we’ll continue to create job opportunities, provide trainings and ensure that the project is as human-centred and inclusive as possible,” he said.
On her part, Head, Livelihoods Programmes of HYPREP, Mrs Josephine Nzidee, said apart from the 5000 youths and women currently undergoing training, the agency had trained 29 Ogoni youths on Cabin Crew and they have been certified by the Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority while others are still undergoing training in ticketing, customer services and flight dispatch.
She called on the trainees to be serious as the agency plans to do more for Ogoni youths in 2024.
“The only thing we are asking Ogoni youths is that as they are undergoing this different skills, they should take it seriously so if we have 5000 Ogoni persons in different skill areas and they are committed and come out better, our socio-economic status would change.
“HYPREP hopes to do more in the area of livelihoods and by next year, we hope to do more skills that would cater for our graduates, what we are doing now is sundry trainings and we use that to take care of people in the community because they are the most impacted,” she said.
Also speaking, Barinuazor Emmanuel, President, National Youth Council of Ogoni People, NYCOP, noted that there is improvement in the project and appealed for more women inclusion in the project, training of more youths, increased welfare for trainees.
He called on Ogoni youths to be peaceful in their agitations.
Comrade Imeabe Saviour Oscar, President of Ogoni Youth Development Initiative while speaking at the meeting, commended the PC for the opportunity to interact with youths of Ogoniland.
He urged the agency not to support persons that are violent in their agitations by awarding them contracts, urging Ogoni youths to support the Project Coordinator.
Port Harcourt Spectator reports that the meeting afforded youths of Ogoniland the opportunity to ask questions concerning the projects while unit heads of HYPREP provided answers to them.
