Murekezi calls for more skills development

THE Minister of Public Service and Labour, Anastase Murekezi, has called for more skills development among the youth to promote self employment as they make up 67 percent of the population. The minister made the call yesterday during the Digital Opportunity Trust (DOT)’s graduation ceremony of its first Interns from a three-week intensive training-of-trainers in ICT, business and livelihood skills. DOT is a Canadian International NGO whose mission is to develop the social, economic and human capacity of countries in the developing world through the use and application of ICTs to start new businesses. The training aimed at empowering vulnerable members of the community to identify opportunities for creating revenue generating ventures to improve their standards of living. Murekezi said that there is still need for promotion of self employment skills within the population across the country.“We need to speed up to reach our vision 2020 and this will only be done by promoting self employment skills. There is need for training of people especially in rural areas so that they remain there to create equal economic growth among Rwandans,” he said. “We need to have a skilled population. To do this, we need to have the determination, desire and emulate countries that developed through the same programmes like Japan, China and others”. Murekezi revealed that only 200,000 people are in the labour market while 400,000 are still unemployed. Speaking at the event, the Minister of ICT, Ignace Gatare, said that his ministry welcomes DOT programs and activities as they are in line with Rwanda’s vision. “Our country is investing considerable efforts in developing policies, strategies and actions aiming at putting in place an enabling environment to accelerate socio-economic development and growth using ICT as an empowering tool,” he explained. Toney Vetter, the senior Director of DOT operations, said that their organisation’s target was to reach at least 3000 members of thecommunity to help them seek employment opportunities through trainings. 30 interns will be deployed to work in various communities in the three districts of Kigali City, and by the end of their nine-month internship, each intern will have impacted about 150 people. Ends