By Muhammad Bashir Ahmad
A Jigawa-based Civil Society Organization (CSO), Jigawa Social Protection Platform (JISOP), has called for concerted efforts to ensure the full inclusion of persons living with disabilities in every aspect of the state government empowerment empowerment and social protection programs.
The call was made by Mr Mustafa Umar, who he led members of the platform to advocacy visit to YEEA’s Director-General (DG) in Dutse.
Umar advocated that the agency include PWDs in all its empowerment, skills acquisition and other social protection programs.
This, he noted will ensure that PWDs are protected socially, economically and culturally.
“JISOP is advocating to this great agency to include PDWs, including People Living with HIV, almajiris, street hawking girls and other vulnerable persons (orphans).
“One of our observation is that even there are PWDs that benefit from previous programs such as J-CARES, loans, grants and skills acquisition training, their number is very negligible.
“There is therefore the urgent need for this agency to ensure adequate inclusion of this group of persons in all its social assistance programs,” Umar advocated.
According to him, part of the observation by the platform was the weak Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) mechanism of the agency, which he said needs to be strengthened in order to ensure transparency and accountability in its operations.
The team lead also advocated for the establishment of functional Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM) for easy channeling of complaints by beneficiaries and timesly response by the agency.
According to him, with over 43 social protection programs being executed by the state government through different MDAs, there is the need for the establishment of a single agency that would coordinate all the social protection programs.
This, Umar said will ensure effective execution, transparency and accountability, as well as accurate data concerning all social protection programs in the state.
Responding, the DG, who was represented by Director Program, Aminu Zubairu, promised that henceforth, his department, which deals with training, entrepreneurship and loan, would ensure the inclusion of the PWDs in its future activities.
Also, Ibrahim Alhaji, Director Skills in the agency, also pledged that his department would also include same group of persons in future skills acquisition trainings.
Alhaji said the agency applied effective monitoring mechanism and sanctioned those who sale items or tools given to after training.
“We also make use of GRM to address all grievances that might arise from one person or group of persons regarding our training or activities,” Alhaji assured.
On establishing single agency to coordinate all social protection activities in the state, the two directors assured to brief the director-general of the agency, who would later table the matter at state council meeting for consideration and possible approval.
