Jigawa state government has debunked the media report which says the state has shared over N192 billion to pregnant women and lactating mothers in the state described the story as distorted and misinformed.
The Executive Secretary of the.state Rehabilitation Board Dr Ibrahim Rabakaya made the assertion while speaking to newsmen in his office.
” The whole annual budget of the ” Cash Transfer to Pregnant Women program ” is N600 million.”So I don’t know where the reporter got his story with that outrageous figure which are higher than the state annual budget” he stated.
Dr Rabakaya explained that, the reporter who made the wrong report has just watched the presentation he made during a learning workshop with Kaduna state team held in Kano state and independently arrived to his wrong calculation of the actual figure or amount of money distributed.
The ES narrated that, the “Cash Transfer” to pregnant women was initiated under the state Social Security program aims at tackling child malnutrition and higher rate of maternal and child mortality in the state.
According to him, 20 pregnant women where selected from each of 287 political wards in the state making total of 5,740 beneficiaries who are receiving N4,000 monthly.
“We commenced the cash transfer in November last yea 2021 and to date we have distributed N226,740,800.00 to the beneficiaries”.
” This cash transfer to pregnant women we copied it from the pilot project executed in three local government area of the state by Action Against Hunger (ACF) and we scaled it to all 27 LGA”s ”
Dr Rabakaya than called on general public to disregard the previous wrong information and use the present figure he gave, which is also available with Fidelity Bank for further verification.
