ABUJA – Festus Keyamo, Minister of State for Labour and Employment, on Thursday, said approximately N24,000, 817,800.00 has been paid out to beneficiaries under the 774,000 special public worksscheme as at June 24, 2021.
He also revealed that 413,630 Nigerians drawn from rural communities and mostly itinerant workers have been paid.
Keyamo gave these statistics at the briefing session coordinated by the Presidential Media Team in Abuja, saying contrary to negative opinions held by critics that the special works scheme may have failed over initial delays to effect payment, it has achieved 60 percent success rate.
He explained that the initial delays that greeted the programme had to do with discrepancies noticed during the registration phase, especially with bank verification numbers.
Keyamo revealed that despite his attempts to ensure due diligence in the implementation of the programme, he uncovered that some fraudulent Nigerians opened multiple bank accounts under a single BVN.
According to him, efforts to separate genuine applicants from those trying to fleece the scheme of its resources accounted for initial delays recorded in the kick off of the programme.
He also told State House correspondents that the lockdown occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily stalled the implementation process, but also led to President Muhammadu Buhari expanding the programme to enable those in the lowest cadre of economic strata to benefit.
He said Buhari deserves commendation because this is the first time that itinerant workers are truly benefitting from a Federal Government social intervention scheme, as beneficiaries were drawn through a multi-sectoral approach.
He said, “When we wanted to introduce the special social works scheme here in Nigeria, the president first approved the pilot scheme, because he thought, perhaps we needed to test run it to see what we can apply here. So the first thing the president approved was that we should do eight states at that time. And not all the local government areas, just five, in selected states originally, that was in late 2019, then I just became minister.”
