Lagos ministry empowers over 6000 with vocational skills

Lagos State Ministry of Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation (WAPA), yesterday, said over 6000 youths and women in Lagos went through its skill acquisition-training programme within the last one year.

WAPA Commissioner, Lola Akande, disclosed this during the ongoing 2018 ministerial briefing to mark Governor Ambode’s third term in office.

According to her, while over 1200 women passed through its short-term skill acquisition programme, 5159 youths and women were trained at the ministry’s vocational centres scattered across the state.

Akande also stated that the ministry’s 45 hectares of farmland in Avia, Badagry was used for the cultivation of Oil palm and other arable crops. She further said the farm has palm oil and cassava processing sections meant for the processing of harvested cassava root tubers and oil palm fruit bunches.

“The ministry in the last quarter of 2017 trained 150 rural women in Cassava, oil palm production and process, vegetable farming and snail rearing at the ministry’s farm in Avia, Badagry, for self reliance and to boost food production in the state.”

According to her, the state government through the ministry donated five modern fish smoking kilns to women fish processors in Epe, Ibeju, Lagos Mainland, Ikorodu and Badagry to boost fish smoking production and remove health hazards associated with the use of traditional mud oven and drum system.