SMEDAN trains 40 Bauchi retirees on welding, fashion designing
Samuel Luka, Bauchi
The Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN) has trained 40 selected retired persons in Bauchi state on welding and fashion designing.
The North-East Zonal Coordinator of SMEDAN, Mahmood Isa stated this while speaking at the end of the one week training session in Bauchi on Friday.
According to him, the training was meant to alleviate the hardship been experienced by retirees in the state.
Isa who said, SMEDAN decided to give the beneficiaries entrepreneurship training on how to handle small businesses, announced that some packages would be given to uplift their lives at the end of the training.
“This programme is a continuous one as it will still be further extended to more retirees in the state”, the Coordinator disclosed.
On his part, the Enterprise Development and Promotion Development Officer of SMEDAN, Mrs Aisha Ojeifo said, all the trainees would be given the necessary equipment needed to commence the trade immediately.
She regretted that most of the time, public servants spend most of their lives serving the nation, but after retiring, the strength is no longer there, thus, rendering them idle.
“Before you know it, sickness and different kinds of ailments would come up and this makes them lose their lives early.” She said.
Ojeifo further explained that SMEDAN decided to come in by introducing such programme to empower retirees to enable them have something doing after retirement.
Aisha Ojeifo while stressing that such empowerment will make the retirees happy and increase the life expectancy, appealed to the beneficiaries to make good use of the equipments in order to become self reliant as well as employers of labour.
Expressing gratitude to SMEDAN for the foresight, one of the retirees, Mr Yusuf Abdullahi described the gesture as a life-saving programme.
Abdullahi while hoping the gesture will be extended to more retirees in Bauchi state, said the economic situation nowadays is not favorable to the citizens.
“Things are very difficult for someone to survive but with this kind of training, it will make us engage in doing something to make ends meet”, he said.