The Rivers State Government will soon commence the disbursement of funds to 991 Rivers indigenes under the Rivers COVID-19 Action Recovery Economic Stimulus Scheme (RivCARES) programme.
Head, State Cash Transfer Unit (SCTU), Result Area 1, RivCARES programme, Dr Christiana Sibor, disclosed this at a training workshop for facilitators of the programme in Port Harcourt, last Wednesday.
Sibor said 636 Rivers indigenes from the 23 local government areas of the state would get N10,000 each for six months under the social transfer while 355 others, mostly youths and women, would be paid N120,000 monthly under the livelihood grants.
She said the transfer scheme would be done in accordance with the state social transfer register.
According to her, the facilitators, 66 in numbers, will be sent to rural communities with a view to validating the social transfer register.
Sibor warned the facilitators against sorting in any form, and also enjoined them to find out those whose names are in the social register.
She said that the programme would help to alleviate the sufferings of the people as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that those who fall under the livelihood grants will be encouraged to re-acquire the skills lost during the pandemic.
Also speaking, the State Technical Head, RivCARES, Mrs Imaonyani Ephraim-George, said the programme has different implementation platforms.
According to her, the cash transfer unit which is under Result Area 1 has the responsibility of implementing Disbursement Link Indicator 1.1(DLI 1.1) that deals with social transfer and Disbursement Link Indicators 1.3 (DLI 1.3) that deals with livelihood enhancement.
She explained that those trained would carry out the implementation of the cash transfer aspect of the RivCARES programme.
“The disbursement will follow processes. As soon as validation of the beneficiaries are done because we are using the state social register to pick the beneficiaries from the two DLIs and because the state social register has been done before now.
“They need to go back to the communities to validate if all the beneficiaries names in the register are still valid, if they are they still domicile here to know the actual beneficiaries, then disbursement will start”, she said.
George advised the facilitators to take their assignment seriously.
In his contributions, Head of Operation, State Cash Transfer Unit, Result Area 1, Emmanuel L. Phimia, said each of the 23 LGAs has three facilitators each.
He said the facilitators would help the government to identify potential beneficiaries of the programme.