The Federal Government’s Cash Transfer Office has urged beneficiaries of the programme in Zamfara to ensure effective savings of the monthly stipends given to them under the scheme.
The National Training Officer of the programme, Mr Kola Solomon stated this while addressing local government facilitators of the programme at a training on Saving and Group Mobilisation in Gusau.
News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) report that over 54,000 households from the six of the 14 local government areas of the state are expected to benefit from the scheme.
Solomon noted that the programme focuses on cash transfer assistance and capacity building to the beneficiaries especially at the community level.
“This is one of the efforts of the Federal Government to reduce poverty level among people at the rural areas especially the female headed households who do not have any source of income.
“The cash assistance is usually followed by capacity building to ensure that the beneficiaries utilise the funds given to them in line with the aims and objectives of this programme.
“This training became necessary, because it is expected for every beneficiary of this programme to be saving.
“We realised that giving the beneficiaries N 5,000 monthly is not enough to pull them out of poverty except if we train them on behavioural change.
“The 137 participants of this training are expected to go back and cascade what they have learnt to the beneficiaries at the community levels.
“We want our beneficiaries to imbibe the culture of saving so that they would be forming groups in form of either contributions or cooperatives”, he added.
He urged the participants of the training to be attentive, so that they will learn and understand the concept of the programme. (NAN)
