Ukorebi Esien | 9th April 2024
Member Representing Ogoja State Constituency in the Cross River State House of Assembly, Hon. Thomas Aruku has expressed commitment and interest to mentor a crop of Plumbers recently trained and empowered by the GFO Orim Foundation in Obudu.
The lawmaker who was chairman of the occasion, said the event was timely and apt has the empowerment is coming at a time when the chairman of the Foundation, Chief Martins Orim was no longer in office and the beneficiaries were carefully selected to rekindle their hopes and make them add value to the society.
Aruku who mentioned that he was once a plumber and reminisced how the profession had sustained him in far away Abuja promised to mentor some of the beneficiaries who are plumbers, stating that he will not only mentor, but patronise and also help them scale their businesses to the next level.
His statement reads in parts;
“Before I became a certified engineer registered with COREN, I was a plumber and I was doing very well. Plumbing job is one job that sustained me in Abuja, and I was not even the head of my team. I was only working with a plumber who was doing well in Abuja. But I could sustain myself and sustain a lot of people around me”. He said.
Speaking further, Aruku said “I am happy to be part of this empowerment and the crop of beneficiaries are people who will go back to the society to add value. For the plumbers, I will follow you up, I will want to be one of those persons that will want to mentor you, I will like to be one of those persons that will want to patronise you, I will want to be part of your moving to the next level strategy.”
Earlier the chairman of the Foundation, who was the former chief of Staff to governor Ben Ayade, Chief Martins Orim note with delight that his desire to empower young people stem out of the need to help constituents step out of poverty. Adding that the ideology behind his empowerment programs is to teach people how to fish and not to give them bread. According to him, when you give a man a fish, you have fed him for a day; but when you teach him how to fish and you have fed him for a lifetime.
The event which featured empowerment of 45 Constituents who were trained in Plumbing, Solar Installation, and Beauty Care had most of the ladies selected from girls who had experienced teenage pregnancy and was targeted at giving them a new start in life.