Buhari never promised idle youths N5,000 – Labour Minister

Dr Chris Ngige

The minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige, has said that President Muhammadu Buhari never promised to pay idle youths N5000 stipends during the electioneering campaign as being insinuated.
Speaking in Abuja during a courtesy visit to his office by the Nigeria Union of Local Government Employees (NULGE), Ngige said there are conditions to be met before the N5,000 can be accessed.
He said, “The conditional cash transfer of 5000 which every one is shouting about, we did not promise to give it to people who are lying at home, people who have gotten schools certificate or degree and doing noting.
It is rather conditional! And the conditionality is, it is either your are in our skill acquisition centre learning a trade and we pay you N5,000 and some N10,000 or you don’t know how to read and write in which we will take you and give you some community service job to do. Like cutting grass, filling potholes on federal highways, you assist road Marshals and jobs like that.
“Some of these jobs might be under 5, 10, 15 or 20 hours in a week which will also determine the remuneration you will get in a week. So that is the terms for the high tensioned conditional cash transfer.”
He said the administration of President Buhari will be focusing more on blue collar jobs while de-emphasizing white collar jobs.

He said, “This government, the Buhari administration is also introducing new things that will bring palliative at the local government levels because the people are there. At least every one is from one LGA or the other. All the poverty alleviation programmes, all the intervention funds, all the social security programmes targeted for our people will be done at the local government levels. For example in this 2016 budget, this ministry is going to remodel and repackage employment and job creation.
“In this 2016 budget, we have made provision for job centres to be created in states and in every LGA in Nigeria, where people can walk in and register themselves just like they register to vote. And the job centres will help us collect those that will assess our skill acquisition centres, because the era of white collar jobs is gone. The two jobs this government will focus on is blue collar jobs and pink collar jobs. The blue collar are those that will use their hands to work, either in construction companies, mining, farmers etc. The pink are the service providers. We take you into the skill acquisition centres and train you to either be a garment producer, painter, welder and so on and your services will be needed because we are going to certify you that you have come and gotten the required training for these jobs.

“So this people will eventually earn money that the man sitting in the office will not earn. So we want to de-emphasise staying in the office and be wearing ties and air condition waiting for vouchers with which to steal money. So the local governments employees will assist us when we come. All hope is not lost,the local government system will synergise with the labour ministry in that regard.”