NGO to empower 250 women in Zamfara

From Ibrahim Sidi Muh’d, Gusau

The non-governmental organisation (NGO) ‘Save the Children’, under Child Development Grant Project (CDGP) yesterday commenced the disbursement exercise of unconditional cash transfer of N3500 to 250 pregnant women in two local government areas of Zamfara state, aimed at improving nutrition status of children within their first one thousand days of live.

While flagging-off the disbursement in Hayin Bawa, Anka local government area of the state, the state team leader of the programme, Tanko Langaya said, 150 pregnant women were registered in Anka and Tsafe local government areas respectively as piloting beneficiaries of the programme.

According to him, all the registered women were given a set of mobile handsets and MTN SIM card free of charge by the organisation, to ensure effective payment mechanism that will provide regular and timely payment to the pregnant women after crediting their accounts through text messages that would be sent to their phone numbers.

Tanko further explained that the programme is first of its kind in the country, and is designed to prevent the emergence of rampant cases of malnutrition within the state, and provide means of empowering women to complement the effort of their husbands in sourcing means of survival within the targeted house hold, particularly poor women who are not working in any private and public institution.

The team manager revealed that, Save the Children is targeting 8,000 beneficiaries before the end of this year, pointing out that, from June this year, thousands of pregnant women will be enrolled into the programme.

He maintained that, beneficiaries of the programme would have a maximum period of 3 years, earning N3,500 on monthly basis.

He said 60,000 pregnant women and children of less than two years from five local government areas of Zamfara and Jigawa states would benefit from the project through its cash transfer initiative.