Nigeria disburses medium, small firms’ survival fund
By Tanko Mohammed
The private business employees have started receiving three-month salary in line with Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP).
The fund is aimed at bringing relief to businesses and individuals across different sectors.
A cross section of beneficiaries of the Payroll Support scheme are excited at the receipt of N30, 000 and N50, 000 alerts of salaries under the MSMEs Survival Fund, a component under ESP.
According to the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to the President, Office of the Vice President, Mr. Laolu Akande, so far, 101,567 employees from 16,250 businesses have received their first monthly payment from the Survival Fund’s Payroll Support Scheme.
The scheme is designed to support vulnerable MSMEs by paying the salaries of their staff for a period of three months because of the vulnerabilities caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Akande noted that verification is still ongoing as the payroll support scheme targets supporting 500,000 beneficiaries with payment of up to N50,000 per employee during the duration of 3 months, starting from October.
A total of 500,000 employees of businesses across the country are targeted to benefit from the scheme, with Lagos State having about 25,000 beneficiaries; Kano, 17,000 beneficiaries; Abia 16,000; while the other States will get 13,000 beneficiaries each.
Some beneficiaries across the country expressed their feelings in randomly selected testimonials collated by the Presidency over the weekend. They noted that they didn’t have to know anyone to benefit from the payroll support scheme.
Having successfully received and processed applications from businesses across different fields, beneficiaries started receiving alerts of payment last week with more persons to receive theirs in the coming days.