From Tony Osauzo, Benin
Journalists and the media have been charged to adequately report the three thematic areas of the Human Capital Development Programmes (HCD), a project of the National Economic Council (NEC) to enable beneficiaries understand the benefits that are inherent in the programme.
The Core Working Groups of the HCD are working on three thematic areas of health and nutrition, education and labour force participation.
Regional Consultant of the programme for South South, Olusoji Adeniyi, gave the charge during a two-day media engagement and HCD reporting for media agencies in Benin.
Speaking on the topic, “Accelerating HCD base in Nigeria,” Adeniyi said the three thematic areas of the programme were poorly reported, pointing out that stakeholders and communities were not aware of the benefit of the programme.
He, therefore, enjoined the media to say more about what government was doing through the HCD to enable communities aware of the benefit of education and other thematic areas of the programme.
“The training is to build the capacity of media agencies and introduce the components of HCD to journalists to avoid misconception.
“The essence of the workshop is to let you know that HCD is a life cycle of a child effect which begins from the womb, the health of the mother, breastfeeding, nurturing of the child and the educational status of that child.
“It involves the opportunity for the child to become employable through the skills that they would have gotten.
“During the period, they were exposed to adolescence to young adults who would contribute to the labour force of the country.
“So the media need to engage the communities to let them know that a child that is wandering around during school hours, is a child that is likely to drop out of school and need to be corrected and taken back to school.
“We want people to understand that a child that is going to be fully developed to contribute to the economy of the nation starts from when the child is in the mother’s womb till the child is given birth to in a facility that has the right kind of birth attendant so that we do not lose the child and mother to infant and maternal mortality,” he said.
In her speech, the Edo HCD Focal Person and Managing Director, Edo Skills Development Agency, Violet Obiokoro, disclosed Governor Godwin Obaseki had invested in HCD and was working with the three thematic areas of health and nutrition, education and labour force, but lamented that all of the improvement recorded so far by the governor in the state in the thematic areas have been under reported.