There was jubilation among the 300 beneficiaries of the Special Micro Empowerment Scheme(SMES) in Anambra State on Thursday as 300 people, mostly women from around the three senatorial zones received a total of N3 million as empowerment fund.
The SMES is a pilot programme of the National Directorate of Employment, (NDE) introduced by the Director General, Mallam Abubakar Mohammed, which is designed to tackle poverty and vulnerability at the grassroot level in eight states with Anambra inclusive.
The disbursement programme, which was held right inside the compound of United Bank for Africa(UBA) branch in Nkpor, saw all beneficiaries drawing the sum of N10,000 each from the bank after signing documents.
The coordinator of the scheme in Anambra, Mrs Ifeoma Henrietta Achigbu who is also the director, Inspectorate Department of the NDE, told our correspondent that her team moved into the rural areas and handpicked hawkers and small scale business people for the empowerment.
“I went round with my team, and we met some of the beneficiaries. We also involved the Catholic and the Anglican churches to help us identify poor people in this category.
“The idea is to help people who are doing small businesses to help boost their businesses, and also the unemployed to start something.
“While in the field, I had firsthand experience of the level of poverty in the land. You see widows who are working hard to fend for themselves, and people who do not even have anything and will be willing to get half of what we are giving today to start up something”, Achigbu said.
The beneficiaries, who were mostly women expressed their happiness, saying it will be the first time government is being sincere about empowering people without making it a loan or attaching stringent conditions to them.
A beneficiary, Anna Iwobi said, “I am very happy about this empowerment. I did not lobby anyone for this, the team got my name from the parish priest of our church and I did not bribe anyone. It will be the first time that this is happening. I will use the money to start up a small business”.
Another beneficiary, Mrs Esther Okafor said, “I am a widow, and I deal in foodstuff. I will use this money to support my business so that I will take care of my family. The team just came to my business place and took my name, at first I did not want to give them because I thought it will be just like the others.
“Most times, people come and take our names, but latter we don’t see any outcome from it, but this one has shown that it is different. My happiness is that they came to us just two days ago, and today they are already paying us”.
The pilot scheme has as its target four categories of people, the unemployed, unskilled/semiskilled/skilled, vulnerable/handicapped and orphans, women, youths, elderly and widows, with the aim of assisting them to start up small businesses.
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