The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Transportation, Dr Magdalene Ajani, has urged the Lagos Deep Offshore Logistics Base (LADOL), to promote local content and youth employment.

Ajani, in a statement said this was in in furtherance of the Federal Government’s policy on job creation.

She said this when she led a senior Management team to inspect the LADOL Free Trade Zone, Lagos, which is one of the nation’s critical infrastructure in the Maritime, Oil & Gas sectors.

Ajani, who was impressed by the level of infrastructural development, emphasised the need for the company and its partners to train and retain manpower to achieve local content consolidation.

The permanent secretary further urged LADOL to continually ensure its policies and practices sufficiently affected the host communities in a positive manner to engender peace and inclusiveness.

Speaking earlier, the Managing Director, LADOL Free Trade Zone, Dr Amy Jadesinmi highlighted the diverse new business lines being developed by the Free Zone.

Jadesinmi invited the ministry to help highlight and market the Zones potentials in fabrication and innovation to its parastatals and stakeholders, particularly in the rail and maritime sectors.

She reiterated the objective of LADOL and Samsung to continue to contribute to the development of Nigeria’s economy.

Jadesinmi said the contribution was through initiatives such as training of local manpower for the maritime/oil and gas sectors as well as increasing local content capacity in the sectors.

“We also invested in training Nigerians to do the work.We compare very favourably internationally. Why? Because of all these investments; because of high local content; because most of the jobs are done by Nigerians,” she said.

The managing director thanked the Ministry’s team for the visit and assured that all the observations and suggestions would be acted upon.

Jadesinmi added that the actions would make LADOL achieve its vision of becoming a World-class brand, as already attested to by the various global certifications it had already received.

The highlight of the occasion was a guided tour of the premises including the heavy-duty fabrication and painting facilities within the Samsung Heavy Industries (SHI-MCI) Shipyard, which was then followed by an audio-visual presentation.

The inspection team, included the Ministry’s Director of Maritime Services, Babatunde Sule and the Director, Legal Services, Pius Oteh.