Unemployed Youths To Get 20,000 To Maintain Public Infrastructures, Says FG

The Federal Government has agreed to pay the sum of 20,000 to unemployed youths in the country for three months, to maintain public and social infrastructures in the country.

This was disclosed by the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo SAN at a news conference in Abuja on Thursday, as part of the government’s plans to reduce the rate of unemployment in the country.

Keyamo said the youth will be engaged in the clearing of drainages, sweeping markets, road maintenance, traffic control, and cleaning of public infrastructures like health centres and schools.

“The pilot programme earlier approved by Mr. President was designed to mitigate lack of job opportunities in the rural areas through a short-term engagement of 1,000 unemployed persons per local government area for a period of three months,” he said.

“It is a dry season/off-season transient job programme and was originally designed for the rehabilitation/maintenance of public and social infrastructure. Participants were to be paid an allowance of N20,000 monthly and were to be recruited largely from the pool of unskilled persons resident in those rural areas.

“Some have asked me why there’s  no registration portal for the 1000 jobs per LGA. My answer is, our real targets for these jobs are mostly unskilled rural workers who may not be literate enough and who can’t have access to any portal. The elites think everything is now by internet.

“Whilst it is inexpedient to ask largely illiterate, itinerant workers to go on the internet & register for jobs through a portal, we shall surely upload their full names and information after recruitment on a website for all to see. The monitoring process would be very transparent.”