HM Betta Explains Unpaid Npower Stipends And Nexit Package:
In the most recent interview, Dr Betta Edu, Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, tells the story of unpaid Npower stipends and the Nexit package.
According to the Minister, when we first joined the Npower initiative, we discovered a slew of challenges and baggage.
So, first and foremost, we believe that more people were permitted to register for the program than the organization’s allocated budget.
Second, funds were made available for people to be paid through the Npower program. However, these money were not paid to the Beneficiaries on schedule by the managers of the Npower funds.
The third and final argument is that there are people on the payment list who aren’t intended to be there, people who were there but aren’t working and haven’t provided any service because they assume that once you’re registered, you’ll just keep getting paid.
HM Betta Edu added that there are persons whose tenure with Npower has expired more than a year ago, but they still believe they should be paid. So they said exit strategy, exit fund, and exit payment.
I hear all sorts of things so the first thing we did was to set up a ministerial committee which has the permanent secretary of the Ministry as the head and of course, we had the director of procurement, persons from the Npower program, NSIP National coordinators and all of them were part of the committee to look into the issues of Npower.
HM Dr. Betta Edu stated that the first report from the system on the ground had been received.
When I arrived the first week, I was given a report stating they had paid 20,000 people, and I inquired as to how many and for how long. They stated that all of these people were sent out from October to December of last year since they had completed their training.
