Empowerment: Delta Distributes 6,000 ATM Cards to Beneficiaries

The Delta State Government has distributed Automated Teller Machine cards to 6,177 beneficiaries of Government Enterprises Empowerment Programme in the state.

The Commissioner for Humanitarian and Community Support Services, Dr. Darlington Ijeh, disclosed this in Asaba while marking 100 days in office.

Ijeh who was sworn-in by the State Governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, as a commissioner on August 2022, vowed to monitor the FG programmes for the betterment of the people.

He said, “Beneficiaries of Government Enterprises Empowerment Programme received their Automated Teller Machine cards for quick and easy access to the soft loans.

“GEEP approved 2,866 beneficiaries in phase 1 and 3,321 in phase 2 in the 25 Local Government Areas. A total of 6,177 ATM cards are currently being distributed in various communities of the State.

“Upon my assumption in office, I introduced the distribution and issuance of the ATM cards directly to the people in the communities as against the previous arrangements in which the beneficiaries paid exorbitant fee to get to the banks before getting their ATM cards.”

The commissioner promised to ensure that the number of beneficiaries increases in the State so as to help lift more Deltans out of poverty level, so as to reflect in future data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

He said that he inherited a backlog of issues on the NHGSFP which ranged from inconsistent payment, to underpayment, low capturing leading, to low figures for cooks which adversely short changed our pupils and the state.

Ijeh disclosed that the N70 naira per meal for School Pupils has been reviewed to N100 naira per meal and reduced other bureaucratic bottleneck that had bedevilled the National Home-grown School Feeding Programme in the State, such as short payment of caterers and indiscriminate payment module became a thing of the past.

He said about 12, 675 youth beneficiaries had finished their program with about 5,589 assigned for the N-power Batch C stream 2 graduates and Non graduates programmes are being implemented in the state

The commissioner also disclosed that over 8,000 beneficiaries capture in the State with monthly stipends of N5000 in the Conditional Cash Transfer among others.