By Francis Arinze Iloani

Despite high unemployment in Nigeria, the Federal Government has uncovered 925 “difficult and very difficult-to-fill vacancies in the country’s labour market.

Skills Gap Assessment report released yesterday by the Industrial Training Fund (ITF) in collaboration with the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) revealed that the vacancies that employers find difficult to fill can be attributed to lack of skills, qualifications or experience among applicants.

The report seen by Daily Trust, which relied on responses from industries polled, disclosed that 19.7 vacancies in housing are difficult to fill just as 13.9 per cent in petrochemicals, 14.7 in other goods, 11.4 in auto industry, 10.3 in textiles, 10.1 per cent in steel, 8.9 in services and 3.3 per cent in leather.

The report found that 15.7 per cent of all hard-to-fill vacancies were due to lack of technical skills, 11.8 per cent due to lack of basic IT skills and 9.2 per cent due to lack of advanced IT skills.

Soft skills such as planning and organising skills, customer handling skills or team working skills were mentioned with regards to between 9.7 per cent and 7.5 per cent of hard-to-fill vacancies.

To remedy the shortage in manpower skills, the report stated that employers take remedial actions such as increasing salaries, increasing trainings to existing staff, redefining jobs, offer training to less qualified recruits, and increasing and expanding trainee programmes.

The Director General of the ITF, Sir Joseph Ari, told guests at the public presentation of the report, that the skills gap report would serve as a reference document for human capital development in the country.

Dailytrustng