The Minister of Women Affairs and Social Development, Sen. Aisha Al-hassan, on Tuesday called on Nigerian women to take advantage of the Federal Government’s social intervention programmes to improve their living standards.

Al-hassan made the call in Abeokuta, the Ogun capital, at a town hall meeting with women groups where she sensitised them on the various empowerment initiatives of government for vulnerable and impoverished Nigerians, particularly women.

The programmes, according to the minister, are the Home Grown School Feeding programme, the Conditional Cash Transfer programme and the Job Creation programme tagged N-power.

Others are the Student Bursary programme known as STEM and the Government Enterprise and Empowerment programme (GEEP).

She informed them that the GEEP, which is a micro- credit programme for men, women, boys and girls, is being directly supervised by her ministry in collaboration with the Bank of Industry (BOI).

According to her, N 1.6 billion has been set aside exclusively for women from the GEEP fund.

Al-hassan said that the GEEP was aimed at providing micro-credit loans, skills development, training and business support for men and women, particularly in the rural areas.

She explained that GEEP was for men and women who are artisans , farmers and market women engaged in productive enterprise.

“Each beneficiary can get between N10,000 and N 100,000 as loan which is repayable in six months with one month of grace after disbursement.

” Each beneficiary must belong to a co-operative society, trade or other registered organisations with a minimum and maximum of 10 and 20 members respectively.

“The loans are interest free and no collateral is required but a five per cent administrative charge applies to cover bank’s expenses.

” Generally, payback period is six months and a weekly recovery plan has been prepared to ease repayment for beneficiaries.

“Government is still working out a special repayment plan for beneficiaries engaged in farming, poultry business, fish farming and other business activities that require longer payback periods,” she said.

The minister, however, stressed that defaulters would be sanctioned and denied use of banking facility in the country.

The wife of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Bola, stressed the need for women economic empowerment to enable them contribute their quota to the socio-economic development of the country.

Gov. Ibikunle Amosun , who commended President Muhammadu Bihari over the programme, also announced plans by his administration to empower 17,100 people across the state with N25,000 each.