Beneficiaries of the five thousand naira conditional cash transfer program of the Federal Government have decried non payment of the stipends for over seven months in Taraba State.
A cross section of beneficiaries who spoke to our correspondent on the condition of anonymity in some LGAs of the state he visited, said the money they have received since the commencement of the program before it stoppage has been helping them in paying their bills and boosting their businesses among other things.
They appealed to the Federal Government, and the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management, Hajiya Sa’adiya Farouq to look into their plights and pay them the outstanding amounts to enable them to solve some of their problems.
An investigation by our correspondent revealed that the whole 16 Local Government Areas of the state have the same complaints.
Officer in charge of the program in Taraba State, Mr. Husseini Skepra who confirmed this to Newsmen in Jalingo, the state capital said the backlog of the money was supposed to have been paid since December last year.
He said, there are a total of 39,137 beneficiaries of the program in Taraba State collecting N399,000,000:00 monthly.
Husseini Skepra who assured beneficiaries that their money is intact and will be paid to them any moment, attributed the delay of payment to the festive periods in December and January, and urged them to remain calm.
Skepta noted that the State offices of the program do not have direct access to the funds as the Central Bank of Nigeria has contracted the payment to service providers, noting that it is only when the Service providers release funds that they are mandated to pay to beneficiaries.
The Programme Officer maintained that they have appealed to beneficiaries to have something doing instead depending solely on the N5000 Federal Government cash transfer Programme.
He said they could engage in savings, contributions, or buying and selling to multiply their money.
On the demise of a beneficiary, the Programme Manager said a situation where a household has a caregiver, the deceased will be automatically replaced by the caregiver but in a situation of a single household there will be no one to replace the deceased.
He said it is only the National Headquarters of the program that makes a replacement.
Husseini Skepra commended the Taraba State Government for playing its role effectively of providing office and qualified staff but lamented that funds provided for monitoring and other activities of the State offices of the program is very meager and appealed to the State Government to assist in that direction to facilitate the success of the program in the State.
Sani Sulaiman
