LSETF wants Nigerians to develop, create jobs

The Executive Secretary, Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF), Tejumola Abisoye, has appealed to Nigerians, especially the youths, to stay in the country and collaborate to develop it.

Abisoye said the appeal became necessary following the rate at which Nigerians; especially professionals are leaving the country.

She made the appeal in Lagos at #BeyondWork platform, organised by Terawork.

The event brought together people from different sectors of the economy, who spoke on what the future holds for work and workers.

Abisoye, who said Terawork is bridging the gap between supply and demand, noted that the world is now global, adding that one could stay anywhere and work with the advantage of paying little or no tax at all.

Though, she noted that skills exportation (brain export) would continue, stressing that the mission of LSETF is to ensure that a million young people are supported to be job creators almost on a yearly basis.

Abisoye, who said LSETF is about skilling people and talent development, believed the future of work is flexibility enhanced by technology.

She said: “Don’t get carried away in making the money… there is no money making without good health.”

According to Salem King, a content creator, the future of work is democratic. “Anything that anybody knows, they learned it, and if they learned it, it means you can also learn it. Even when we think about work, we need to think about preserving our humanity.

The healthier you are – mentally, physically, or emotionally – the more of an impact you can actually make,” King said.

Chief Executive Officer at Terawork, Femi Taiwo, said the future of work remains flexible. On the establishment of Teraworks, Taiwo said the need to create a platform where buyers and sellers can meet and if need be, engage in brain export for economic development formed the basis for the creation of the platform.

With this vision, he said he started Terawork in 2018 from his personal experience when he was looking for someone to help him fix a problem, which he couldn’t handle. “I went online looking for solution because there was no Terawork then.

I went searching online and I stumbled on a company in Ikeja and I spoke to the guy because I was in a hurry to get a project I engaged the guy and then he requested for an advance payment of N350,000 for him to mobilize him to start a job. The moment I paid him, the story changed. I realized that he was a lousy person in terms of what he claimed he can do but there was nothing I could do. Because of my busy bank work, I didn’t have time to pursue him to get refund and I lost the money unfortunately. I realized that there will be a lot of people like me SMEs that they may not have all the funds they need to get professionals who have the experience. It’s not all the time you need a trained person to do your entire task for you but if you can’t afford them what if you don’t know anybody who is a friend that will recommend you. That led to creating Terawork so that not just anybody not just SME alone from one man business to large enterprise from perfect talent in terms of skills set, if I need somebody junior I should find them. If my budget is as low, people do job of N2, 000 on our platform, others have been given the over N20milliom on our platform too.

“We’ve tried to create Terawork to be a preferred platform where anybody could come to hire talent on demand not just for a full time basis you know most of us in this part of the world are using the fact that if I cannot employ someone on a full time basis, then there is nowhere they can look for anybody that can just do one month or three month or work on a project with and then in a kind of flexible manner. That’s what we are trying to solve because businesses in the western world are used to this kind of stuff. That is the reason they are more successful in terms of mentality because they know how to balance full time employees with freelance workers that are working with on-demand,” he said.