‘Manpower devt plan imperative to economic growth’

Dr Kabir Usman, the Director-General, Centre for Management Development (CMD), has called for development and implementation of the National Manpower Development Plan in the country.

Usman told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja that the plan would assist private and public sectors to provide the required manpower that would improve the economy.

He said the human capital development sector plan that was in the Nigeria Vision 20:2020 document was summarised, hence the need for the relevant sectors to develop the proposed national manpower development plan in detail.

According to him, manpower development plan is part of the vision particularly when you look at human capital development.

“The vision said we need certain number of universities and graduates, and then we aggregate that because getting degree as a graduate is just about training.

“If somebody gets engineering degree, it does not mean he cannot be a manager.

“Aggregating that into greater detail is supposed to be done by relevant sector agencies.

“The agencies need to drill down to look at what is underground and see what aspiration is and project, and say this is the level of manpower that we are actually required.

“The vision gives us summary terms of manpower we require but the detail of that as regard to the level and where they are that should be the responsibility of sector to try and say that this is what we need to do,’’ the director-general said.

Usman said that the centre, in collaboration with the National Bureau of Statistics and other relevant agencies, was working to harmonise data on the proposed plan document.

He said that lack of funds hindered the production of the draft document. “Literally, this matter is based on funding. We put a lot of proposal to various agencies in the public and private sectors to see if we can get some funding to do this.

“We have got the information. What we need now is to put them together in a coherent way,’’ he said. (NAN)