THE Federal Government has concluded arrangement to engage about 18,000 unskilled/unemployed youths in skill acquisition training scheme aimed at reducing the rate of unemployed youths in the country.

Flaging-off the scheme in Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi State, Minister of Labor and Employment, Senator Chris Ngige, said: “We are witnessing the flag-off of the Sustainable Agricultural Development Training Scheme, SADTS, in 19 states and FCT and later Basic National Open Apprenticeship Scheme, B-NOAS, in 36 states and FCT as well as training of Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs, in the North-East sub-region of the country.”

Ngige listed welding, carpentry, automobile, fishing, farming and sewing as some of the areas the youths would be trained. He disclosed that the training involved three main planks, including two weeks adoptive and intense fields training in crops/livestock in which the country has comparative advantage, trainee farmers mentorship and linkage with development in money deposit banks and off-takers. According to Ngige, the benefiting states were carefully selected to pilot test of the scheme across the six-geo political zones in the country.