Portal to engage senior citizens after retirement set for April

The Federal Government is set to create a portal with a view to engaging, reengineering and reactivating capacity of older persons who wish to continue offering services after retirement.

The Director-General of National Senior Citizens Centre (NSCC), Emem Omokaro, disclosed this on Wednesday at a collaborative meeting with relevant government agencies and stakeholders in Abuja.

Omokaro said the intervention was in realiseation of the huge potential in the older persons that could be tapped into national development.

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The NSCC director-general said the portal would be operational latest by April.

“The aim of the collaboration is also to assist the centre to create an online portal that would engage older persons who are professionals in their different fields of endeavour to tap into their wealth of experiences,” she said.

“This is a gathering of service-level collaborators on continuing engagement bureau projects, continuing engagement means that we are disrupting retirements.

“We are creating platforms and tools, we are creating spaces for older persons who wish to continue to engage and have the opportunities to do so.

“You know, older persons have a right to contribute in any area they so wish and they also have a right to access the labour market after retirement not necessarily that they are to be employed by the government.

“We believe that older persons have a lot of talent and potential, they have expertise and skills so we can incubate their experiences.

“We have built our portal because we need all the data that we need to have, whether you retired from the federal civil service, state or local governments level.

“We are creating these platforms, and we are also identifying agencies that we need at this service level.

“So, in essence, the programme is really mobilising our older people because we want to show the wealth that Nigeria has and our approach is we are positioning NSCC to create wealth.”