The World Bank-sponsored State Employment and Expenditure for Result, SEEFOR, Monday, said it has budgeted $70 million (about N25.27billion) for its intervention in public works in youth engagements next year for the Niger Delta States.
The states are Edo, Delta, Bayelsa and Rivers States.
Task Team Leader of SEEFOR in Nigeria, Parminder Brar stated this in Benin City, Edo State at the opening session of a four day interaction among the four states on Integrated Financial Management Information System, IFMIS.
He said out of the total amount, Edo State would get $18.2m (N6.5b) for the year 2019.
Brar said “The SEEFOR project will be spending about $1.5 million every month in Edo State and basically Edo has been doing well. Tthis project covers public works next year. This project will support the employment of 9,000 young people in Edo State for the next 12 months and we will be implementing almost 59 small projects in Edo state.
“We are supporting TVET (Technical and Vocational Education Training), we are supporting Benin Technical College and other institutions in Edo State and we are supporting public financial management, we have been supporting automation, the oracle implementation in Edo State and Edo State has been doing very well in oracle implementation although there are some things they need to do.”
He said the meeting among the four states was to share ideas and compare notes and strong and weak areas
Earlier, project Coordinator in Edo State, Toju Onaiwu said SEEFOR would achieve 95 per cent disbursement of the funds in the state before the end of the year “We are fine tuning the system to make it function better and again with technology we want to keep upgrading and have a robust SEEFOR system in place.”