Lagos State Government has said that N939.98 million was disbursed to 1,835 Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises to mitigate the losses suffered as a result of damages and looting of businesses during the #EndSARS protests.
The state’s Commissioner for Wealth Creation and Employment, Mrs. Yetunde Arobieke, disclosed this, yesterday, during a press briefing to commemorate the second anniversary of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s administration.
She said after the protests, a MSME Recovery Fund was set up to support businesses in Lagos State to mitigate losses of business concerns.
According to her, 1,835 beneficiaries got N939.98 million with 10,005 direct jobs and 40,020 indirect jobs saved.
The commissioner also said that through the Conditional Cash Transfer programme, 6,810 households had been paid so far since the inception of the programme with N269,340,000.00 disbursed to the beneficiaries.
She revealed that her ministry recently got an approval for the enrolment of additional 5,438 beneficiary households in the newly-targeted local councils of Somolu, Agege, Ifako-Ijaye, Ajeromi-Ifelodun, Alimosho and Ikorodu.
Arobieke further said that the state government, through the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF), had supported over 14,646 small businesses in the state and created more than 123,720 jobs.
“The loan programme provides access to finance and business development support to Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SME), Micro-Enterprises (ME) and Micro-Enterprise Startups (MES) beneficiaries with a maximum value of N5m, N500,000 and N250,000 respectively.
“The Lagos State Employability Support Project plans to increase the pool of skilled manpower to alleviate the acute shortages of employable labour in Lagos State. The project will improve the quality of labour in several sectors including; construction, manufacturing, healthcare amongst others.
“Lagos Innovates is a dedicated platform that refers to a set of programs that provide support for the exciting and fast-growing startup ecosystem in Lagos State. Lagos Innovates is designed to assist founders and startups by facilitating access to high quality workspaces/infrastructure, learning, early stage investment capital and investor and peer networks. Programmes are open to all innovation-driven enterprises that are less than three years old and based in Lagos State.”
