Gladys Nweke
The total number of civil servants in the payroll of the Rivers State Government is 46,000, according to figures made public by the Special Assistant to the Governor on ICT, Asawo Ibifuro.
Speaking during an interaction with journalists in Port Harcourt, Mr. Ibifuro said that government is the highest employer of labour in the state.
While acknowledging that there was ongoing audit and biometrics of civil servants in the state, the governor’s aide hinted that there were plans to upgrade the civil service data system.
However, reacting to statistics by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on the level of unemployment in the state, Ibifuro pointed out that the state government cannot absorb all of those who need jobs, stressing that the public sector has a great role to play to reduce unemployment.
In the light of this, he disclosed that the Rivers State Government has unveiled a database to engage thousands of job seeking youth through collaboration with the private sector.
The new scheme, Asawo further explained, “is tagged, ‘RIVJOB Project’ and is ICT-driven to collate data of young job seekers and connect them with employers in the private sector.
“The project is a stop gap measure”, Asawo stated, adding that “and it will pool skills and employees, linking them to employers, who will use the database to engage those they need”.
“The platform also promotes training and skills development for the unemployed youth, while at the same time providing ready-made data for government’s development planning”, Asawo stated.
He announced that the RivJob platform will come on stream for youth to register freely April this year.
“We want to see how to use ICT to create jobs for Rivers people” he said.
