Beneficiaries of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) in Plateau are set to flood a micro-finance bank to enhance their well being and that of their respective families.
Dr Sumaye Hamza, Plateau State Social Investment Programme (SIP) Focal Person, disclosed this on Thursday in an interview with newsmen during a Technical Review Meeting on Savings Group and Cooperative Bank Linkage in the state held at Dimples Hotel, Jos.
“As of now, we have a saving up to the tune of N20 million just from beneficiaries in six out of the 17 local government areas of the state, which were the pilot states of the CCT programme.
“This dream or intention of the state represents a huge impact of the CCT programme on the citizens of Plateau as long as we are concerned.
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“It is our desire that those women or beneficiaries are able to do little savings to own a microfinance bank. Thank God it will soon be a success,” Hamza said.
Hamza, who is the Executive Special Assistant to Gov. Simon Lalong on Social Investment Programme said that the training was about core responsibility, which has to do with the livelihood enhancement and a component of the CCT programme.
She said that only 11 states were chosen as beneficiaries of the Core Responsibility Pilot Scheme of the Social Investment programme in the country.
According to her, the choice of Plateau among the 11 states was due to the excellent performance of the state in international and national intervention programmes.
The focal person said that the inclusion of a wide range of stakeholders such as communities, national and state officers, banks, EFCC, Code of Conduct Bureau, ASTC, Health experts etc, was aimed at seeing how to enhance the well being of the rural women or beneficiaries even beyond the intervention.
“So, when the intervention ceases to exist, they can begin to take ownership and responsibility of their economic status so that they will not go back to where they were before the intervention.
“Gov Lalong chose Health as our focus area because of the gap in the area of Child and Maternal health, even though there are a lot of packages attached to the cash transfer as a component of the Social Investment Programme,” she said.
Hamza said that the meeting was part of a sensitisation programme to create awareness and to see how partners could synergise on how to improve the implementation and well being of the citizens of Plateau.