Special public works programme targets 11,000 youth in Gombe -FG

From David Hassan, Gombe

No fewer than 11,000 youths in Gombe will benefit from the extended special public works programme of the Federal Government.
Chairperson of the programme, Mrs. Abigail Albashi made the disclosure while inaugurating the committee members on Monday.
Mrs Albashi said the Special Works programme was designed to mitigate the lack of job opportunities in rural and sub urban areas through a short term engagement of 1,000 unemployed persons per Local Government Area for period of three months.
She explained that out of the number that will benefit from the gesture are 1000 persons per LGA with 200 participants that would graduate.
The chairperson said the beneficiaries of the programme would be receiving N20,000 allowance monthly.
According to her, the participants would be engaged in active community related services that are peculiar to their LGAs such as Drainage digging and Clearance, irrigation canals clearing ,Rural Feeder Road Maintenance and Traffic control.
Others were street cleaning, cleaning of public infrastructure like health centres, schools and the likes.
She said each LGA need to tailor its programme to meet the needs of the area and expectation .
Albashi further said, the programme will begins on 1st October, and ends in December.
She said the programme may be extended every year but it depends on how successful it was implemented and how buoyant the Federal Government purse is.
She charged the committee members to to ensure that the task is taken seriously with patriotism.
Our correspondent reports that apart from the main committee, five subcommittees were inaugurated to ensure smooth and faster implementation of the programme.