Museveni commended for fighting unemployment

The Minister for Karamoja Affairs, Mr Peter Lokeris, has commended President Museveni for fighting unemployment among the youth through various interventions such as the Presidential Industrial Zonal Hubs project.

“Our President is thinking for us all the people of Uganda. He even put up a special programme for Karamoja to develop it because it was lagging behind,” he said.

The minister made the remarks during the second graduation ceremony of Napak Presidential Industrial Skilling Hub in Napak District on April 17.

A total of 423 students were awarded certificates in seven vocational disciplines, including tailoring and design, hairdressing and make-up, building and construction practice, carpentry and joinery, welding and metal fabrications, bakery and confectionery, and leather processing (shoe making).

“The President came up with this idea to train the youth to be skilled in order to stop being redundant. The idea was to get the youth into groups so that they can get skills irrespective of their education background. All this is to get you out of poverty and improve your livelihoods,” Mr Lokeris said.

The minister also hailed what he termed as visionary and strategic initiative of the President to skill the uneducated youth which he said has done a lot in increasing the number of skilled workforce in Karamoja and across the country.

Mr Lokeris assured the graduates that the skills they acquired would enable them get jobs and earn a living.

The State House Comptroller, Ms Jane Barekye, congratulated the graduates upon achieving the milestone.

“I want to thank the Ministry of Education under the leadership of Maama Janet Museveni for giving us a chance to allow our certificate to be legalised by the Directorate of Industrial Training. This is a heavy certificate which can take you to levels until you reach a PhD,” Ms Barekye said.

The State House comptroller said the programme was among President Museveni’s economic interventions with a mission to, among others, reduce unemployment among the youth, make more youth job creators not seekers, bridge the gap between the employed and unemployed, improve household incomes, substitute imports and promote exports.

“He has achieved all those objectives based on the testimonies you have heard from here,” Ms Barekye said.

“As State House, we have a plan which is awaiting approval of the finances by the President of starting a common user facility in some of the districts of the region so that when these people finish, they can go work from there as a group, get some capital from their savings and go start their businesses to earn a living,” she added.

Ms Barekye asked leaders in Karamoja to make it a policy for non-government organisations to employ the graduates while doing any work within the region. She says this will help them put their skills into practice.

The Napak District Chairperson, Mr John Paul Kodet, said when they started the programme, the turn out was low because many of the would-be beneficiaries feared to join the programme due to the insecurity in the area.

He, however, said following the efforts of the UPDF, the region was pacified.

“That is the reason we were able to register 204 students in the second intake and 219 in the third intake. We are progressively moving forward. I want to thank the UPDF 3rd Division Commander, Maj Gen Don Nabasa for bringing peace and sanity in the sub-region that has enabled the students to acquire the skills uninterrupted,” he said.

Maj Gen Nabasa said: “Majority of these beneficiaries had lost hope and dropped out of school. Some of them were potential warriors and were about to join the other work so that they are able to make some living.”

“But after being here, they are very changed people and I attribute this to the wonderful initiative that our commander In chief put in place and being supervised by the State House comptroller and her team. Thank you very much for the wonderful work,” he added.