40 selected retired people have been trained in Bauchi State on welding and fashion design by the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN).
While speaking at the end of the weeklong training held in Bauchi on Friday, the North-East Zonal Coordinator of SMEDAN, Mahmood Isa, said that the training was to alleviate the hardship experienced by retirees in the state.
According to him, “SMEDAN decided to give them entrepreneurship training on how to handle small businesses, and at the end of this, we will give them some packages to uplift their lives.”
He also said that “this programme is a continuous one as it will still be further extended to more retirees in the state.”
Also speaking, the Enterprise Development and Promotion Development Officer of SMEDAN, Mrs Aisha Ojeifo, said that all the trainees would be given the necessary equipment needed to commence the trade in earnest.
According to her, “Most of the time, public servants spend most of their lives serving the nation, but after retiring, the strength is no longer there, and most of them would be idle by doing nothing.”
She added that, “Before you know it, sickness and different kinds of ailments would come up, and this makes them lose their lives early.”
Aisha Ojeifo added that “SMEDAN decided to come in by introducing this kind of programme to empower those retirees so that they can have something to do after retirement, and this would make them happy and have a longevity of life.”
She, however, called on the participants to make good use of the equipment to empower them and make them employers of labour rather than selling them off.
One of the retirees, Mr Yusuf Abdullahi, who lauded SMEDAN for coming up with such a ‘lifesaving’ programme, hoped that the training would be extended to more retirees in the state.
He said, “if you look at the situation we are in nowadays, things are very difficult for someone to survive, but with this kind of training, it would make us engaged in doing something to earn ourselves a living.”
Yusuf Abdullahi added that, “it would also make us self-reliant and employers of labour, and we hope that SMEDAN will keep on doing it.”.
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