By Giwa SHILE
The Lagos State Government {LASG} has trained 400 artisans out of the 1,000 it projected to train under its Master Craftsman Project.
The Commissioner for Housing, Prince Gbolahan Lawal, made the disclosure in Lagos. Lawal said the initiative was to help the industry deliver quality housing schemes to the residents of the state using locally trained artisans.
He said the ministry carried out survey among the existing contractors handling housing projects in the state and find out how many Nigerians were employed as part of its work force in the building industry.
Lawal said the result of the survey showed that a larger percentage of foreigners were employed in the work force of the building industry.
He said the contractors attributed this to lack of trained Nigerian personnel. Lawal said the need to fill the gap made the state government to initiate the Master Craftsman Project.
“Nigerians constitute less than 30 per cent of the work force; the rest are non-Nigerians. So, that made us to come up with the idea of the projects, where we train existing artisans. We also teach them to understand what it takes and how to become an entrepreneur.
“The target is for us to train 4,000 artisans at the end of the day. We have trained 400 out of the 1,000 we plan to train for this year. We are left with 600 artisans.
“The government will offset the bill of the training and it has approached the private sector for collaboration to train others.
“The ministry plans to train up to 1,000 artisans between now and the first quarter of 2019 at the least. It is going to be a continuous process because our target is to train 4,000.
“We expect that the 4,000 artisans that we will train to also train their own apprentices. So it is going to be train-the-trainers arrangement and it is going to be really effective, ’’ he said.
The commissioner said the training was going to be in phases. He said the ministry had begun to receive applications from several trade organisations such as the masons, bricklayers, and iron benders.
“We are using our vocational schools at Agidingbin, Ikotun, Surulere and Epe for the training of the artisans,” Lawal said.
He said the ministry was partnering the Nigerian Institute of Building and other professional bodies to train the artisans.
He said this would make them to become experts at the end of their respectively trainings and be able to defend the certificates that would be awarded to them thereafter.
The commissioner also said the ministry was working very hard toward meeting the housing deficit being experienced in the state by its residents.
He said the ministry was collaborating with the relevant agencies of government so that it could continue to deliver on its mandate
