EBOLA: pupils take to vocational skills as FG extends holiday

Some parents in the State of Osun have enrolled their wards in vocational skills centres across the state, as the Federal Government extended resumption dates of pupils in primary and secondary schools due to Ebola threat.

OSUN DEFENDER’s investigation revealed that the pupils have since the announcement on the holiday extension enrolled for vocation skills in hairdressing, bead-making, fashion and textile making, carpentry, vulcanising and auto-mobile engineering works.

A visit to some of the centres by the medium revealed that both boys and girls took to artisanship, due to extension of their schools’ resumption date.

Some of the interviewees said it was necessary for them to take to vocational skills because of the downward trend of education nationwide and that skill acquisition would help them out of the current unemployment crisis bedevilling the country whenever they finish schooling.

One Miss Shakirat Lasisi, a Junior Secondary School pupils in a Middle School in Osogbo, who was one of the trainees enrolled at a Shalom Beauty Centre in the state capital, said she pleaded with her parents to enrol her at the centre because learning the art of making hair would not only add to her knowledge, but as well provide means of living for her in the nearest future.

Another respondent at the centre, Olamide Babalola, said as a male, he was learning the skill so as to become an event planner in the nearest future, as hair dressing is an aspect of event management.

At Fidu Saloon, along Ede Road in Ile-Ife, a unisex salon owner, who is a graduate of Obafemi Awolowo University, explained that it is not only pupils of secondary schools that enrol for vocational skill acquisition, but university graduates and under-graduates as well, since entrepreneurial skill is the way out of unemployment.
He added that most of his enrolees are students of higher institutions, who spend three to six months intensive training.

At a mechanic workshop at Igbalaye Area of Osogbo, the owner, Mr Tirimisiyu Yusuf, said he has twenty apprentices, while some are full-time apprentices, some only attend workshop during weekends and during long vacation.
He averred that vocational training is needed more in time like this, when there is dearth of artisans in the country with everyone clamouring for non-existent white-collar jobs.

Yusuf urged parents to enrol their wards for vocational skills, so as keep them away from crimes and unemployment, adding that some undergraduates are becoming commercial motorcycle operators because they are not marketable for employment, neither did they acquire any skill which could make them gainfully employed or be employers of labour.

Some parents, who spoke with the medium on the holiday extension over Ebola threat, carpeted the Federal Government for the holiday extension, saying that it was not in the interest of the pupils and parents, while querying whether the government has built quarantine centres in schools across the nation or kit the students nationwide against Ebola.

According to a social critic, Kehinde Akinseyindemi, the Federal Government should have liaised with the states’ Ministries of Health and Education to fashion out workable modalities to curb the spread of the deadly virus in schools across the nation.

source>>> osundefenders.org