Date: 2018-10-14

The National Conditional Cash Transfer Office on Friday commenced a three-day training for its facilitators on ways to ensure savings and group mobilisation among the beneficiaries of the programme in Kwara.

Mr Yusuf Sulaiman-Abiodun, the Training Officer for the state said that 41 facilitators were selected from the four newly enrolled Local Government Areas (LGA) of the state. He said the LGAs include Baruten, Ekiti, Oyun and Irepodun.

Suleiman-Abiodun explained that under the cash transfer programme of the Federal Government, a beneficiary is entitled to a monthly stipend of N5, 000 in which he is paid N10, 000 bi-monthly. He stated therefore that the essence of the training was for the facilitators to step down the training among the beneficiaries so as to inculcate savings culture in them.

"The purpose of this training is to assist the beneficiaries and enlighten them that they should not consume all the money.

"After they have received the training, they will go back to the communities and step it down in order to guide them on how to form a group and save from the government's monthly stipend. "From the savings, they will be able to access loans and improve their livelihood. "By so doing, they will graduate from the programme and it will allow other intakes into the programme," he said.

Mrs Seun Fakeye, the national facilitator for the training said the participants were from the four LGAs that just joined the cash transfer programme. She said the participants were trained on how to mobilise the beneficiaries into groups, particularly cooperatives and encourage savings. This savings, she said would be what the beneficiaries would fall onto at the end of the programme.

She described her training experience with the participants as wonderful, saying the state office was diligent in choosing them.

Fakeye urged other LGAs in the state to emulate Offa, where the beneficiaries had already saved about N15 million from the meagre amount of money and later disbursed it for their businesses.

Speaking on behalf of the participants, Mr Popoola Oluwasanjo said the training would help them to encourage good savings among the beneficiaries of conditional cash transfer programme in the state.

He urged the federal government to sustain the programme, which he said had made impact on the lives and businesses of the beneficiaries.

Oluwasanjo also appealed to the state government to key into it, describing it as peoples-oriented. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that the trainees at the end of the programme made presentations.