774,000 SPW Jobs: Keyamo further clarifies on Payment of beneficiaries

Following the announcement by the Minister of State, Labour and Employment, Mr Festus Keyamo that the Federal Government has commenced partial payment of the beneficiaries of the Special Public Works Programme, many Nigerians have queried the uneven payment as Access Bank pays one month Stipend to Beneficiaries affiliated to the bank.

Related: 774,000 Jobs: FG commences partial payments, clarifies on Stipend delay

Mr Keyamo had during the press statement,Saturday, noted that after the release of some of the funds by the Ministry of Finance for the payment of SPW stipends, he directed a rigorous scrutiny of the accounts of the participants before payments and discovered irregularies such as accounts not matching BVNs, multiple accounts bearing a single BVN, non-existent BVNs, etc.

He added that only ACCESS Bank had responded with accounts verified for payments and the NDE has, Saturday, commenced payments of those accounts with ACCESS Bank adding that they await the responses of ZENITH, UBA, FCMB, FIDELITY, HERITAGE & Yobe Micro-Finance Banks to clean up the anomalies.

The commencement of the payment by Access Bank however generated mixed reactions as the beneficiaries who anticipated full payment of their 3 months Stipends were paid for only one month even as the programme has completed it's 3 months duration since it officially began on 5th January, 2021. 

Mr Keyamo in a tweet, Monday, through his official Twitter handle https://mobile.twitter.com/fkeyamo, has clarified "that the full payment for each SPW participant is N60,000 noting that "the ‘alerts’ of N20,000 received are for the first month." 

The Minister further explained that "the N20,000 uniform balance reflected in all accounts is because the accounts opened for the participants were not existing accounts."

According to Mr Keyamo in the statement, only N20,000 were paid to the beneficiaries to test-run their accounts as they are new accounts, hence, the payment of the balance of the N40,000 will be made to cover for the N60,000 earmarked for each beneficiaries of the 3 months programme.