On the heels of rising concern on lack of requisite skills required to address rising unemployment, the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) is banking on its Students Industrial Work Experience Scheme (SIWES) to address concerns skills mismatch in Nigerian University education and labour market.
Joseph Ari,the Director General of the ITF who stated this in Abuja at the 14th Biennial SIWES national conference in Abuja with the theme: Implementation of SIWES in the new world order-roles and responsibilities of stakeholders said the fund is concerned about rising unemployment despite skills gap exposing needed opportunities in some industries.
The Director General said the ITF has been engaging stakeholders on skills mismatch in Nigerian Universities and addressing the concern through its SIWES programme,adding that available records revealed that students who passed through such trainings are needed in thelabour market.
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Ari further informed that the Fund has taken a step further and is in partnership with the University of Jos in conducting a study to determine the dynamics in labour market demands in order to adjust it’s training to the findings.
He noted that the earlier, national skills gap assessment in some priority areas conducted by the United States nations Industrial Development Organisation UNIDO and the federal government revealed that despite spiralling unemployment, 925 trades were wither difficult or hard to fill in Nigeria’s labour market.
