Federal Government has vowed to honour the memory of the dead Nigerian Immigration Service (NIS) applicants by creating more jobs.
Speaking at the inaugural Housing Stakeholders’ Implementation Summit in Abuja yesterday, the Coordinating Minister for the Economy and Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, said: “The best way to honour the memory of youths, who died at the Immigration recruitment, is for us to create more jobs.
“There is a lot of distress in the country and people are questioning whether the government has created the 1.6 million jobs it claimed to have created last year. The answer is, it has, according to the information from the National Office of Statistics. However, the problem is we have 1.8 million entrants into the job market every year. So, job creation has not caught up with the number of people entering the job market.”
She noted that government is caught between “creating 1.6 million jobs vs. 1.8 million needed per year. So there is a 200,000 job deficit per year. In addition, we have a pool accumulated over time, of unemployed people amounting to 5.3 million and a pool of under-employed people (those working but the job is not full time) of 13.6 million. So Nigeria has a difficult unemployment challenge accumulated over the years.”
Dr. Okonjo-Iweala said she hoped the first target of creating jobs for new entrants of 1.8 million was almost in sight, adding: “Once we reach that on a steady level, we can focus on creating more for the unemployed and under-employed pool.”
She said the summit had given the government “the opportunity to stand true to the memories of those who died seeking Immigration jobs.”
The minister urged stakeholders at the summit to keep to their pledge “to jump start the programme with at least 10,000 new house owners or mortgage beneficiaries by the end of the year. With the ratio of five direct and 2.5 indirect jobs created per house, this should enable us create at least 75,000 jobs as a start.”
Well-functioning housing markets, she said, enabled savings, wealth creation and entrepreneurial development, “as a result, housing can address two interrelated policy priorities of poverty reduction and economic growth through enterprise development.”
According to Dr. Okonjo-Iweala, “we need to work harder and faster to create more jobs for our youths. We are focusing on housing because this sector can increase the number of jobs in addition to growing the economy. This sector will create jobs for builders, carpenters, plumbers, managers, interior decorators… so many jobs.”
She identified two parallel working groups mandated to analyse and deliver on the two major constraints identified as mitigating against harnessing the full potential of the sector.
These are the Housing Finance group, chaired by the Ministry of Finance and includes partners: CBN, PMIs, World Bank, IFC, commercial banks, NAICOM, etc.; and land and land titling issues, mandated to review extant land regulations and registration processes to determine how best to ensure a more transparent and simplified access to land and C of O s.
You waited for people to die before you realized the need to create job in Nigeria. I know you guy's will never create any job,you are just saying this because of 2015. Even the 1.6 million jobs you claimed, you created is a lie. Just mention one sector you created the job from. Deceiver!!!
ReplyDeleteIt is unfortunate that people died in the NIS recruitment. However, we ought to admit the fact that it was not a direct result of unemployment but of poor organisation etc on the part of the organisers. As regards the created jobs, it's not a lie; just that it hasn't gone round because it is very small compared to what needs to be done. The government has been very open about this and taking practical steps towards redeeming the situation. It is not right to discredit the progress that has been made, no matter how little.
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