The Secretary to the Government of the Federation (SGF), Mr Boss Mustapha, on Wednesday, charged Nigerians to avail themselves of government interventions to better their living standards.
Mustapha gave the charge at a one-day Strategic Meeting with Leaders of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) to Identify Service Delivery and challenges in MSMEs Interventions
Mustapha, who was represented by Dr Mbaeri Maurice, Permanent Secretary, General Services Office, Office of the SGF, encouraged people to look for links to the facilities and gain access to them and utilise them effectively.
He also encouraged stakeholders, government agencies and private sector to emphasise and disseminate the information to the youth and the beneficiaries because the facilities were created for people to access.
”But if they are not aware of it, they will have no information about it.
“We also encourage the media to help publicise all government laudable objectives.
”Government is actually doing a lot. If people are not aware of the government’s programmes, it will appear as if government is not doing enough.
”People should avail themselves of government interventions to better their living standards.
“I encourage people to look for links to these facilities and gain access to them and utilise them effectively.
”The government of president Buhari means well for the youth and citizens of this country. It is left for anybody to take advantage of that and key into government policies,” he said.
The Director-General, Bureau of Public Service Reforms (BPSR), Dr Dasuki Arabi, stressed that low recipients of government loans was as a result of lack of proper communication strategy at the point of incubation of the programmes.
Arabi added that if there were proper communication strategies, expected beneficiaries would be able to understand the required procedures and steps to follow.
”I do not think the conditions or requirements are difficult because some of the interventions even come at zero interest rate.
”We hope that policies will be adopted that will help government fine tune these interventions and to make it easy for Nigerians to access intervention funds,” he said.
Director General, Global Centre for Human Empowerment and Entrepreneurship, Mrs Rose Gyar, said that it was important to identify and solve the issues of MSMEs because it was only when problems were identified that they could be solved.
Gyar said that for years now, interventions had been rolled out for SMEs but poverty and unemployment kept rising.
”So for us in the MSME space, we deem it necessary to interface with the government to actually sit down and look at the processes and strategies if they are good enough.”
She, however, complained that they were not getting enough information on the interventions that were out there.
“These interventions are expected to trickle down to the grassroots and reach every Nigerian citizen.
”Another thing is that the MSME institutions have been reorganised and repositioned. We are ready for partnerships and we are also ready to create the needed jobs.
”Our appeal is that we want to partner the government in the interventions that are coming out.
“They should not be handled by consultants, they should be managed by MSME institutions.
”The government needs to know that this is how these interventions can get to the citizens.
“These institutions can equally monitor their members to ensure that the interventions are adequately managed,” she said. (NAN)
