By Taiwo Shobajo, Abuja.
Mrs Rose Gyar
The Director General of Global Centre For Human Empowerment And Entrepreneurship Development ( GLOCHEED) Mrs Rose Gyar, has called on the Nigerian government to establish Women Entrepreneur Intervention Fund as parts of efforts to include women and the vulnerable in the financial inclusion intervention schemes of the government.
Mrs Gyar made the call at a one day strategic meeting with the leaders of Micro,Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) organised by the Bureau of Public Service Reforms( BPSR) in Abuja.
She said that the roles of women in nation building can not be over emphasised as they are pivotal to the socio- economics development of the country, adding that Nigerian women are no exception.
Mrs Gyar, who quoted recent survey conducted by NBS and SMEDAN, said that Nigerian women entrepreneurs owned 43% of 41 million Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises in Nigeria.
She stated that Nigerian women and people with disability and albinism deserved a dedicated and long term affordable business funds to further contribute their quota to the nation’s economy.
“Women deserved a dedicated source of long term affordable business funds to sustain businesses for greater contribution to the national economy”, she said.
The Director General further explained that coalition of women groups have formed a coordinating platform through Federation of Women Associations in Micro,Small and Medium Enterprises (FEDWIN) in order to partner and collaborate with the relevant government bodies.
As she put it, this will provide an impetus for easy engagement with stakeholders to support economic empowerment and financial inclusion.
The platform, according to her, is inclusive of all economic empowerment focussed groups across the economic sectors which include faith based, community based, self helped and women living with disabilities and albinism groups with 60 platform at the national level, 100 in each state/ FCT and 20 people in each of the 774 local governments in Nigeria.
Mrs Rose Gyar, whose organisation, is a training ground for accessing the Federal government grants and loans for Nigerians commended the government for its financial inclusion intervention programmes to cushion the effect of economic meltdown but urged the government to do more especially in the area of information management on the existence of various interventions available for citizens.
She argued that the issues of cumbersomeness in accessing the funds even after approval especially the AGSMEIS process of passing through designated vendors to access the equipment and lack of service delivery charter that spells out definite timelines and deliverables in the implementation could mess up the good intentions of the government if they are not adequately addressed.
