Zamfara State Government says it has disbursed N66million to 6,600 beneficiaries under its Social Intervention Programme (Z-SIP) across the state in March.

The Secretary of the Programme, Alhaji Mubarak Magaji-Maradun disclosed this in an interview with News Agency of Nigeria in Gusau on Saturday.

Reports gathered that Z-SIP is one of the empowerment schemes introduced by the Gov. Bello Matawalle administration.

Magaji-Maradun said that the beneficiaries included unemployed youths and women drawn from the 14 local government areas of the state. The governor introduced Z-SIP to reduce unemployment and poverty among citizens of the state and according to Maradun, each of the 6,600 beneficiaries received N10,000 last month as monthly stipend from the state government.

The official also said the state government would soon introduce skills acquisition projects for one million small scale traders across the state aimed at supporting the unemployed youths and women in the state to set up their own small and medium scale businesses.

“Very soon, we are going to commence the projects where over 1 million beneficiaries would benefit from N10 million,” he said.

He, however, apologized to the beneficiaries for the delay in the payment, which he said, was caused by COVID-19 outbreak and assured the people that the programme would fully resume with regular monthly payment to all the benefiting youths and women appealing to them to utilize the funds judiciously for the state government to achieve the desired objectives of the programme.