The Federal Government, on Sunday said it has commenced the partial payment of the N20,000 monthly stipend to the 774,000 beneficiaries of the Special Public Works programme.
This was disclosed by the Minister of State for Labour and Employment, Festus Keyamo (SAN), in a statement in Abuja.
It will be recalled that the participants had complained on some social media platforms about the delay in the payment of their stipends.
However, the minister, while giving an update on the payment issue on his Twitter handle, said Access Bank has verified accounts for payment while the National Directorate of Employment has commenced payment into accounts with the bank.
He also revealed that government was waiting for Zenith, UBA, FCMB, Fidelity, Heritage and Yobe Micro-finance banks to clean up the anomalies.
The statement read in part: “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.”
Keyamo further said that the Federal Government was determined to ensure that those selected for the programme get paid.
