By Dipo Olowookere
The federal government has authorised Heritage Bank and five other financial institutions to commence account opening for beneficiaries of the Special Public Works Programme throughout the 774 local governments.
Recently, the government announced the creation of 774,000 jobs across the country, with 1,000 picked from each of the 774 local councils.
Heritage Bank, which has always supported entrepreneurs in the country, was chosen by the federal government to be part of this programme.
Other lenders selected were Zenith Bank, UBA, Access Bank, Fidelity Bank and FCMB.
“The banks assured us that even in LGAs where they don’t have branches, temporary registration centres would be opened in such LGAs so that the participants would not have to travel far to open their accounts,” the Minister of State for Labour and Productivity, Mr Festus Kenyamo, who is in charge of the exercise, said.
The Minister further remarked that the breakdown of banks taking care of each of the LGAs will soon be published.
Explaining the core areas of the SPW programme, Mr Keyamo said, “Special Public works department is one of the four core focus of the NDE.
“It seeks to identify and optimize employment opportunities that abound in the public works sector by organising the skilled, un-skilled and semi-skilled persons that are unemployed to carry out utility, environmental, infrastructural development and sanitation works.”
Recall that 1,000 participants were drawn each from the 774 local government areas in Nigeria for the Special Public Works Programme.
The MD/CEO of Heritage Bank, Mr Ifie Sekibo, while speaking on this development, stated that engaging the bank on such arrangement was a demonstration of the lender’s commitment to using financial inclusion to boost entrepreneurship development, which is critical to its mission to create, preserve and transfer wealth across generations.
He reiterated the bank’s commitment on investing in human capital development, especially entrepreneurs for critical economy recovery, restating that the aim of Heritage Bank being at the forefront of youth empowerment is to emancipate the latent entrepreneurial spirit in the teeming youths to unleash their support to the growth of the economy..
According to him, Heritage Bank’s various entrepreneur schemes in the support for business had always focused on dependable job-creating sectors, such as agricultural value chain (fish farming, poultry, snail farming), cottage industry, mining and solid minerals, creative industry (tourism, arts and crafts), and Information and Communications Technology (ICT).
