The Federal Government may soon stop funding SIWES and hence, students who go on Industrial Training (IT) would no longer get allowances. This was made known by the Director-General, Industrial Training Fund, Prof. Longmas Wapmu in a interview with Punch. He also made it clear that moneys owed students who have completed their industrial training would be paid.
In the interview, He said, “What we are doing now is to compile the list of the students who could not get their money. We will publish it in about three national newspapers so that the students can come and correct their mistakes.
“There are possibilities that after the students on our list have been paid, we will stop paying the SIWES allowance as the Federal Government recently informed us that it may not be able to fund SIWES any longer. We recommended this too because even when we were not paying, students attended the programme with their parents’ assistance. If we stop, that will not affect them and it will stop the issue of owing students a large sum of money.”
He added, “In Nigeria, we are very much after certificate but the National Qualification Framework intends to streamline all the qualifications. There are certain programmes that are being run by certain institutions but these are not graded. The National Qualification Framework will now bring the different types of training together.”