Newly employed workers in Imo state are currently stranded at the various ministries and local government councils in the state, 247ureports.com has learnt.
The Imo State government had last month employed 25,000 graduates into different ministries and local government councils in the state under its Youth Must Work Programme with “engagement letters” on a stipend of N20, 000 per month.
But findings at the state secretariat on Port Harcourt Road revealed that a lot of the employees have no offices and seats to do any work.
This, it was learnt, caused the new employees to hang around the rails of the offices, even as it was discovered that they also were not being assigned any duties to do there, as there were no jobs for them to do.
Some of the employees, who spoke to our correspondent, expressed frustration that they come to offices on daily basis without any real job to do.
For instance at the Ministry of Education, an employee who gave his name simply as Emeka said he had been coming to the office for sometime now without anybody asking them to do anything.
He added that the only job they do was to write their names in the register provided for them in one of the offices and continue hanging about.
Also at the Ministry of Commerce, a lady who also gave her name as Uche told our reporter that she was not expecting to do anything in the ministry because, according to her, even the real workers sometimes slept in the offices as they also had no job to do.
She said that their problem was that they had no offices to stay, a situation that made them stay outside the offices.
Reacting to the situation, the Commissioner for Youths and Sports, Comrade Kenneth Emelu, whose ministry is in charge of the newly employed youths, said the essence of engaging the youths was to take them off the streets and get them to have a feel about working in an office before they could get permanent employment anywhere.
The commissioner who spoke through his personal assistant, Stanley Duruanyim, denied that the there were no offices for the newly employed workers, saying that the reports that the youths had no jobs to do were not true.
He said the challenges being experienced by the employees were some of the usual difficulties “an innovation like this should have because there is no state in Nigeria where you can find this kind of gesture from a governor”.
Emelu stated that the development became like that because it was a new thing and assured that the ministries were doing everything possible to provide them with clement environment to work and learn.
He also disclosed that out of the 25, 000 youths employed only 2000 were posted to the ministries with each ministry receiving 100 employees, saying “there is no way the ministries cannot accommodate this number”
