By; VITALIS UGOH, Calabar
Senator Gershom Bassey, representing the Southern Senatorial District of Cross River State has called on the Nigerian Content Development Monitoring Board to engage the youth and local contractors during the construction of the National Oil and Gas Park.
He made the call in Calabar on Saturday at ground breaking ceremony for the construction of the multi billion Naira Oil and Gas Park located at Odukpani local government area of the state.
Senator Bassey who was represented by Barrister Edem Ekong, the former Director General of the Department of Public Transportation, DOPT, said there should also be the training of the required manpower by the state to ensure that the state meets its quota of the needed staff that would function in the plant when it becomes operational.
According to him, “we have about 2000 jobs that would man the plant after completion of construction work. It is therefore necessary for the authorities to train youths in the required skills, particularly technical skills so that the state would not be left out when the plant becomes operational”.
He said what often leads to youths restiveness or conflict between youths and organisations is when local people are left out in the employment scheme of the organisation that operates within their catchment areas..
He declared “I have seen some example of local content here but you need to do more by engaging more local contractors to handle some of the projects during the construction stages”.
Earlier, engineer Simbi Woba, the Managing Director of the Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board said over 2,000 jobs would be generated after the completion of the plant in 2020.
Wonah therefore sued for the cooperation of the community and the state government to fast track the construction process.
Said he, the construction work would be put on hold if the youths in the community make unnecessary demands as the agency has not come to exploit the resources of the community but to build a facility where technical workers in the oil industry would be trained.
He said that 2,000 direct jobs and another 2000 spinoffs would be created here when the plant becomes operational. What the community needs to do is to partner with us and ensure a speedy completion of the work because we do not abandon projects.
Performing the ground breaking ceremony, Professor Ivara Esu, the deputy Governor of Cross River said the state is prepared to partner with the agency to ensure a peaceful environment and speedy work completion.
