The Eze Upata the 3rd, King Felix Enene Otuwarikpo, has appealed to the Industrial Training Fund to approve more training programmes for Rivers State.
The Eze made this appeal on Thursday in Port-Harcourt, the Rivers State capital at the closing ceremony of National Industrial Skills Development Programme organized by ITF.
While speaking at the occasion, the Upata monarch advised the ITF to take advantage of the current positive posture of the Governor of Rivers State on youth empowerment to bring more ITF programmes to the state such as the Women Skills Empowerment Programme and the Technical Skill Development Programme and strengthen the collaboration.
He said considering the projects the Rivers State government has executed, more skilled manpower would be needed to sustain them, and therefore appealed to ITF to package more intervention programme peculiar for Rivers youths and forward to the Rivers State government for consideration and approval
He further thanked them for consistently considering Rivers State for their training, stressing that Rivers people are privileged to have a governor that is youth friendly with much passion for the development of the state.
He assured ITF that Rivers state is now safe and secure, and thanked them for training traditional rulers in Upata kingdom, noting that there is now a great improvement in their administrative prowess
While he advised the beneficiaries to use their “starter pack” for its original purpose, he promised that the Eze Upata palace will support the beneficiaries from Upata Kingdom.
He promised to appeal to the chairman of Rivers State Council Of Traditional Rulers, HRM, King Dandison Jaja, JP, Amayanabo of Obobo Kingdom to ensure the council comes up with a policy of adopting trainees from ITF and empower them at the community levels as part of encouragement.
The former ITF staff also called on Nigerians to take very seriously the training and retraining offered by the Fund, stressing that no country in the world can stand out without technical skill development of its citizens.