The Government of Edo State has rectified what it described as the “wrong perception by the public of the nature of the 200,000 jobs” to be created by the Governor Godwin Obaseki-led administration as promised during the electioneering campaign.
A government statement said it would be in error if people assumed that the jobs the governor promised would be made available by the traditional expansion of the state civil service to accommodate every job seeker.
The statement signed by the Chief Press Secretary, Mr. John Mayaki said: “It’s necessary to, once more, disabuse the minds of those still stuck to that unproductive mind-set. The quest to create 200,000 jobs will, as explained in the electioneering campaigns, not be through the traditional approach of bloating of the civil service, but by a paradigm shift, which will focus on a functional entrepreneurship-based system pursued in an enabling environment created by the government as represented by the current Agripreneural initiative among others currently being pursued by the government”.
It was further revealed that the initiative would produce entrepreneurs in Agriculture, who would, in turn, progressively create more jobs as their businesses expanded buoyed by the government’s incentives, supervision and provision of an organised market for the produce.
Meanwhile, the statement continued that: “It would be recalled that the administration of President Bill Clinton of the United States of America is reputed with the feat of creating up to 30 million jobs. That feat was achieved not by an unsustainable and unproductive expansion of the Civil Service, but through a scheme by which the government guaranteed loans given by banks to willing and able entrepreneurs to either start new businesses or expand existing ones all aimed at creating more job spaces in the form of staff to be employed”.
Urging entrepreneurs of all gender across the state to key into the initiative, the government issued a call for potential and capable initiators, both young and old, to be a part of the paradigm shift towards stimulating sustainable productivity in Edo State for economic development with its attendant job creation for the teeming youths.
