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From: TONY JOHN, Port Harcourt
A non-governmental organization in Rivers State, Securing Individual Means (SIM), said it has begun online registration for unemployed youths of Rivers origin.
SIM also known as What Rivers Youths Need, is a project meant for the basic need of the youths particularly, in the area of economic empowerment, job creation among others.
Project Consultant, Blessing Fubara, while speaking to newsmen in Port Harcourt, said the project targets to delist at least 2,300 youths from the list of 1.7 million jobless population of the state before 2023 election campaign kicks off.
Fubara observed wide disconnect between the youths and government, blaming it on lack of purpose.
According to him, successive governments fail to implement their campaign promises to the youths during electioneering period, assuring that SIM is poised to change the narrative, beginning with the sitting government.
Fubara said the registration portal opened was meant for the collation of data of every unemployed Rivers youth, including their academic qualification, skill learnt, interests among others, to guide the NGO on how to engage government on the behalf of the youths.
He said: “This is political era, people are being distracted by politicians, political mandates and promises. There is need to get the sitting political leaders to implement their previous electioneering campaign promises before the commencement of another round against 2023.
“The recent unemoyment survey report on Rivers State has it that a whooping number of over 1.7 million people are jobless in the state.
“There is apparently high level of hardship, hunger and poverty in the state.
“We want to do proper potential analysis of Rivers youths, what is your academic qualification, what is your interest, what is your passion, what are you doing at the moment. We want to see how we can take away at least 2,300 persons out of unemployment list before the election is held next year.
“We are reaching out to them with loans, grant offers. The loan will come without any collateral and it will be interest-free loan.”
According to him, registration is opened to every unemployed youths of the state origin, irrespective of any political party of affiliation.
Fubara explained further: “Already, we have reached out to some banks in the state for partnership in this project.
“At the same time, we’re also reaching out to the youths in the line of their business needs; we’re also going to present them with employment offers and because we have their data, statistics, we are going to speak with organizations who have job openings particularly those who published job vacancies that match with the informations we have in our database to give them the opportunities.
“Beyond skilled jobs, businesses and white collar jobs, we’re also going to provide opportunities for those who would like to go into farming to also explore. This will be going on in 18 LGAs of the state.
“Already, three of the LGAs have already donated 30 acres of farmland for this purpose; 10 acres each. There is also plan to establish agricultural processor chain for large scale farming.
“The plan is to organise the youths into 10 cooperative societies with 10 members in each unit of cooperative to operate each of the farms in the LGAs; each cooperative group is to operate on one acre of land.
“The youths will be handed over farming implements and seeds to farm. We will also recommend them to our bank partners for loans under the out-grower chain.
“Already the registration portal www.simrivdb.ng at the last check has over 1000 registrations.
“This is a prove that the youths have been expecting a project like this, it shows that they are tired of roaming about without no means of livelihood, it is prove that the rate of unemployment is indeed high in the state.
He appealed to every jobless youth in the state to take advantage of project “What Rivers Youths Need” to get what they want before the next political dispensation.
