Humanitarian Ministry Revamps N-Power, Geep Schemes
The Federal Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development has expanded and restructured two of its flagship poverty alleviation and youth empowerment schemes –Government Enterprise Empowerment Programme (GEEP) and N-POWER- under the National Social Investment Programme (NSIP), which have been flagged off at major events in Abuja.
Highlights of the repackaged schemes include raising the number of N-Power beneficiaries to one million beginning with the resumption of the previously stalled N-Power Batch C, now in two streams CI and C2, the first of which was flagged off with 450,000 graduate and 60,000 non-graduate components and refocusing of the three arms of the GEEP-TraderMoni, MarketMoni and FarmerMoni to exclusively target marginalized youth, vulnerable women and rural farmers respectively as GEEP 2.0.
GEEP 2.0 has been expanded to provide soft loans and skills to an additional one million beneficiaries with emphasis on small holder farmers in the 2020/2021 year as well as un-banked poor and vulnerable but skilled citizenry usually left out of credit delivery programmes. Its implementation model accommodates representation at federal, state and local government levels .
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The loan portfolio for TraderMoni and MarketMoni have been increased from ten thousand naira to fifty thousand naira while FarmerMoni will now attract N300,000 with provision for value chain and creation of digital market place for beneficiaries to sell their produce.
Humanitarian Affairs Minister Sadiya Umar Faruk who presided over the on-boarding of the beneficiaries of the schemes also revealed other innovations such as the National Social Investments Management System(NASIMS), partnerships with key MDAs including NYSC, NOA,UBEC and NPHCDA on which the ministry would be leveraging for effective implementation of its programmes and the introduction of a USSD short-code *45665# to address communication challenges by providing required connectivity and technical support for provision of information services to beneficiaries.
The National Social Investment Programme (NSIP) comprises N-Power, GEEP2.0, Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme (NHGSFP) which have impacted over 12 million households in the country and are expanding their scope, according to the Minister.
The flag of and on-boarding events coincided with the second year of the creation of the first-ever Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development and appointment of Hajia Sadiya Umar Faruk as pioneer Minister charged with coordination and streamlining of various Federal Government intervention programmes under ministerial supervision and management enhanced service delivery in poverty alleviation, youth and women empowerment, skills acquisition and job creation targeting the poor, marginalized, vulnerable and disabled citizenry.
By PRNigeria
