Kingsley Layefa
The Minister of State for Labour, Employment and Productivity, Festus Keyamo (SAN), on Saturday announced that President Muhammadu Buhari has directed the release of the funds for the payment of stipends to the 774,000 participants of the ongoing Special Public Works (SPW) Programme across the country.
This disclosure was conveyed in a statement issued by Keyamo through tweet posts on his official Twitter handle.
The minister said that he has directed the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) to begin processing the payments adding that participants should begin to receive payments soon.
Keyamo further directed that every payment to participants should be made using the Bank Verification Number (BVN) of their accounts in order to eliminate fraud and/or double payments.
This will also assist the government in having an audit trail of every single payment.
According to Festus Keyamo, “President Muhammadu Buhari has graciously directed a release of the funds for the payment of stipends to the 774,000 participants of the SPW programme. I have consequently directed the NDE to begin processing the payments and participants should begin to receive payments soon.
“In order to eliminate fraud and/or double payments, I have also directed that every payment to participants should be made using the BVN of their accounts so we can have an audit trail of every single payment. Those who registered with different names should not expect payments.”
We can recall that the SPW programme which was designed to engage 774,000 unemployed Nigerians was kick-started nationwide on January 5, 2021, after several postponements.
The sum of N52 billion was appropriated for the scheme, each of the 774,000 workers is expected to earn N20,000 monthly for the three-month duration of the job, amounting to about N46.44bn.
The take-off of the programme has not been with some controversies as members of the National Assembly had asked the Federal Government to suspend it due to disagreement with the supervising minister, Festus Keyamo, over who should supervise the programme.
