Nigerian govt begins payment of stipends to 774,000 participants of Special Works programme

The Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo, said on Sunday the Federal Government has commenced partial payment of the N20,000 monthly stipend to the 774,000 participants of the Special Public Works programme in the country.

Keyamo, who disclosed this in a statement on his Twitter handle,  blamed the delay in the payment of the stipend to problem with the Bank Verification Numbers (BVN) and other details supplied by the participants.

He said Access Bank has verified accounts for payment while the National Directorate of Employment (NDE) has commenced payment into the beneficiaries’ accounts with the bank.

READ ALSO: Buhari approves N46.4bn for payment of 774,000 SPW participants 

The minister added that the government was waiting for Zenith Bank, United Bank for Africa (UBA), First City Monument Bank (FCMB), Fidelity, Heritage and Yobe Micro-finance Banks to resolve the anomalies.

Keyamo wrote: “After the release of some of the funds by the Ministry of Finance for the payment of SPW stipends, I directed rigorous scrutiny of the accounts of the participants before payment.

“We discovered instances of accounts not matching BVNs, multiple accounts bearing a single BVN, non-existent BVNs, etc.

“Because of our determination to eliminate fraud, I further directed the NDE to write to the banks to clean up these anomalies before commencing payments.

“So far, only Access Bank has responded with accounts verified for payment and the NDE has today commenced payment of those accounts with Access Bank.”

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