Dr. Joe Abah reveals BPSR trained 95,090 retirees in 7 years...

Dr Joe Abah, Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), says the bureau trained 95,090 retirees in seven years.

Abah made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Thursday.

He said that the Federal Government thought it wise to impart basic knowledge and lifelong skills on retirees after retirement due to the advantages. 

DG. BPSR. Dr. Joe Abah

He said that about 84,000 retirees from ministries, departments and agencies were trained in 2007, while 1,198 were trained in 2008, 1,030 in 2009 and 2,601 in 2010.

The director general also said that 1,242 retirees were trained in 2011, 2,411 in 2012 and 2,608 in 2013.

He said that that officers who retired between 2014 and 2015 were not captured in the bureau’s training programme because of lack of funds.

``BPRS has been running pre-retirement training for people from parastatals for about seven to eight years now. 

`` Unfortunately, we were not given funds to run it in 2014, so that means that we were not able to hold the exercise in 2014.

`` Even then, the amount of funds released to us is often less than the number we need to train. So, we are already carrying a backlog of people.

`` Funds have, however, been appropriated in the 2015 budget and we are hoping that if the funds are released before the end of the year, we will be able to run the training programme,’’ he said.

He said that the bureau would also clear the backlog of the programme once the funds were made available.

``Depending on how much is released, we may be able to clear the backlog we have previously.

``It means that from next year, we will start to train those who are still in service, so that we can equip them before they actually retire’’.

Abah said that over the years, pre-retirement training had been organised for high cadre civil servants in accounting skills, branding and on how to manage staff.

He said that this was designed to enable them to be self-dependent after retirement.

`` For those who have worked for 35 years as employees, we give them professional skills. 

``In some cases, we also tell them how to start some businesses after retirement,’’ he said. 

(NAN)