The Federal Government has given update to Nigerians that the Special Public Works Programme will boost the Nigerian economy.
The Minister of Information and Culture, Lai Mohammed, stated this today while featuring on Channels Television’s ‘Sunrise Daily’.
Mohammed also said Nigeria did not exit recession by accident, adding that the policies of the government were responsible for the development.
“We did not exit recession by accident, it was because of the hard work and the planning of the government,” the minister said.
Speaking on some of the policies of the government which made the exit possible, Mohammed said, “What we did was that we pumped money into the system, we did so by creating jobs, we did so through three major programmes: the first is the 1,000 jobs of public works that was given to each local governments and we have 774 local governments, When you have 774 young men working on public works, on roads, it goes a lot to boost your economy.
“There is what we call survival funds which the federal ministry of industry and investment supervised. One of the things we said we must do is that we must prevent loss of jobs and create new ones and we must make sure that MSME (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises) does not collapse. So, what did we do with survival funds? We asked companies to employ between five and 50 people, we gave them payroll support for about three months and that payroll support went to about 500,000 MSMEs.
“Then, we also did what we call a one-off grant whereby we gave N20,000 to artisans, hairdressers, keke napep (riders), and this went to about 333,000 such individuals.”
Good
If truly this program is to help the poor. I think they have to start receiving their alerts this month because those people started working since last month and they are eager to start receiving salaries so please honourable minister try and do so
I remain All progressive loyalist