The Federal Government has called on the management of technical colleges to prioritise environmental and social safeguard to enhance effective implementation of the World Bank-assisted innovation and skills acquisition project.The Minister of Education, Malam Adamu Adamu, said this at a workshop on Environmental and Social Safeguard Screening and other preliminary activities for Technical Colleges in Abuja on Wednesday.The workshop is on implementing Innovation Development and Effectiveness in the Acquisition of Skills (IDEAS) Project that was recently launched in Abuja.Adamu noted that environmental and social management are critical to effectiveness and sustainability of the project in line with the Nigerian environmental policies and the World Bank’s environmental and social policies.“As important as developmental and expansionist projects are for human development, what is of equal importance for consideration is ensuring environmental and human protection in the process of executing projects.“The environmental and social screening of sub-project marks the beginning of the Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) or Environmental and Social Management Plan (ESMP) processes.“In view of this, all Environmental and Social Officers (ESOs), Project Managers (PMs) of the participating Technical Colleges needs to be trained on how to carry out environmental and social screening of subprojects in the colleges.” This will ensure using screening checklist provided for in the Evaluating Solution in Management Facilities (ESMF). The essence of the IDEAS Project is to address the current deficiencies in the education system,” he said.The minister also urged the youths to take full advantage of the opportunities offered by the project.An estimated 40 technical colleges and private sector would benefit from the project which also has a technical teacher training component.
