By Gbenga Adewale
Lagos State Office For Disability Affairs (LASODA) has distributed working machines free of charge to about 300 People Living With Disabilities after graduating from the year 2019 Vocational Empowerment Programme.
The Commissioner for Youth and Social Development, Mr Olusegun Dawodu who made this known on Wednesday, during the Disability Entrepreneur Vocation and Empowerment Programme, held at LASODA premises, Alausa Secretariat, Ikeja, said the present administration through its various policies being implemented by all its agencies prioritises people with disabilities.
He said LASODA aim is to remove a large population of people living with one form of challenges or the other from the streets and turn them them to wealth and job creators thereby increasing their stakes in the state’s megacity development aspirations.
The Commissioner stated that the five weeks training programme provided opportunities for the beneficiaries, many of whom had lost hope of being able to learn any skilled vocations either due to lack of funds to acquire the training, refusal to train them by the business entrepreneurs, non conducive environment of learning for PWDs, and lack of funds to acquire the basic tools for take-off of the business after training in series of vocations such as Shoe making, Make over, Sewing, Electrical installation, Auto Gele, Bead making, Tie and Dye, Graphics Design, Barbing, Hair dressing, Bag making and Tailoring.
Dawodu expressed that the beneficiaries were drawn across the recognised cluster associations in the state and three centres have been created in Ikorodu, Badagry and Epe, areas of the state.
He encouraged the civil society groups to do more to advocacy on the rights and privileges of PWDs towards changing the negatives and erroneous beliefs of some people and organisations in the society about these special people.
