“Nigerians Should Take Up Blue Collar Jobs” – Chris Ngige

Minister of Labour and Employment, Chris Ngige, has urged Nigerians to go into other professions like carpentry, plumbing, and not only look for white collar jobs.

Ngige pointed out that unemployment will reduce and prpductivity will increase if Nigerians go beyond seeking white collar jobs and take up blue collar jobs that are not common.

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Ngige made this assertion while speaking on Channels TV on Wednesday morning. The Minister noted that the Federal Government has an established vocational skills policy, but that Nigerians think blue collar jobs are beneath their status. He said;

“It (unemployment) was an issue and that was why we did an advocacy and told people not to look at only the white collar jobs. There are blue collar jobs. Skills. You have to train your hands. You have to do plumbing, carpentry, tailoring.

“We had to do the vocational skills policy. The NDE (National Directorate of Employment), one of my parastatals, has at least three or four vocational skills programmes.

“We have our specialist skills centres in Lagos, Ibadan, Kaduna, Bauchi, Calabar, Warri, Enugu, and all over the federation.

“We now have many in collaboration with the state governments. We send them people to train them. And people come in there as apprentice and after we finish with them, we empower them.

“But the problem is that, how many people are ready to come there and train?

“They regard those jobs as jobs that don’t befit people’s status, but it’s not true. We’re counselling people that going to do these jobs doesn’t make you an inferior person.

“But here, everybody wants a (white) collar job. They want to stay in air-conditioned office. They want to work in the bank or oil companies and nothing less than that.”

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