By Daniel Dauda, Jos


All have been set and done for Federal Government Public Works Selection Committee Plateau State to begin touring and sensitize populace of 17 Local Government Areas concerning the 17,000 unskilled workers.

You could recall recently, the minister of state Labour and employment Barr. Festus Keyamo,SAN, inaugurated a 20 man committee state selection committee for each state in Nigeria including the FCT, where the minister made it categorically clear that the program was graciously approved by President Mohammadu Buhari.

Addressing Journalists at Old Government House, Rayfield, chairman Federal Government Public Works Selection Committee of Plateau State, Rufus Bature stated that the minister revealed that president Buhari is targeted to recruit one thousand itinerant unskilled workers in all the 774 local government areas in Nigeria.

"In total we shall be recruiting 774,000 Nigerians for this programme.

" This means that in Plateau State, we shall be recruiting 17,000 itinerant unskilled workers, that is 1000 per Local government each."

Rufus Bature,a former Secretary to the Government of Plateau State said these decisions were arrived at, by an inter-ministerial committee at the National level headed by the Director General of the National Directorate of Employment(NDE).

The committee which is multi-sectoral is saddle with the responsibility of identifying public works to be executed in each of the 17 LGAs, this would be in addition to projects already identified by the Federal ministries, agencies and parastatals in different localities across the state.

"While selecting the 1000 for each of the Local Government Areas we shall set aside 200 who will be unemployed graduates that might be deployed to the various MDA as stated above. Women are to be allocated 35 percent of the slots while people with disabilities have 10 percent."

However, the 17,000 recruit will be engaged by the Federal Government between October and December 2020 to carry out public works that are peculiar to each LGA as they will be paid N20,000 each per month.

According to the minister, Festus keyamo(SAN), depending on how successful the program is or how buoyant the Federal Government purse is, the program may extended or repeated every year...there may be some exit strategies for this programme, one of which is to move these workers to some agricultural projects" Bature emphasized.

He also said the forms which will be distributes to be filled by identified recruit are free with identity code of all state wards.

All the state wards have been allocated at least 50 slots depending on the number or wards in the LGA. It is our believe that at least 3 people from each of the polling units will be beneficiaries of this programme.

The chairman, Rufus Bature affirmed that these forms are to be distributed to every Plateau person so qualified irrespective of political differences, religious affiliation and any other things that would undermine our unity.