RETIREMENT SHOULD NOT BE DREADED – ITF DG.

Retirees of the Industrial Training Fund have been advised not to dread retirement from Public Service.

The advice was given by the ITF Director General at a retirement workshop organized for some junior staff of the Fund recently at the ITF Centre for Excellence, Jos.

According to the Director-General, who was represented by the Ag. Head of Research and Consultancy Department, Mal. Aminu Mohammed, ‘retirement actually is supposed to be a thing of joy, time of leisure and enjoyment, after a long period of service to the Nation’.

He however pointed out that ‘because of what happens in the country, many people dread retirement, because they think they are losing the major source of their livelihood’.

Mal. Mohammed reminded the participants that ‘whatever happens to us as individuals has already been ordained by God’. He said that retirement is one of the events that will happen to every public servant, pointing out that everything that has a beginning must have an end’.

The Deputy Director called on the Training Manager of the Centre for Excellence to liaise with personnel to get the names of all those who have less than 10years of service, so that the programmes will be organised for them on time.

In his opening remarks, the training manager of the Centre for Excellence, Mal. Mohammed Sanni advised the retirees not to see retirement as death, because it is an ordinary change, just like graduation from Primary School.

He said that people get very confused when they get close to retirement because they believe they will be thrown out to a place they are not used to. Some he said even start getting old.

The Training Manager advised the participants to put what they have learnt in practice. ‘If you cooperate and practice what you learn during the course, at least up to 75% of the envisaged problem of retirement will be taken care of’ he said.