By Mustapha Sesay
The World Bank has approved an additional US$10 million for Sierra Leone to pursue its Social Safety Nets (SSN) project which seeks to provide income support to extremely poor households in the country.
The additional grant maintains the original objective of the SSN project implemented by the National Commission for Social Action (NaCSA), according to a dispatch by the World Bank`s country office in Freetown, which notes that the project would ensure cash transfers to 7,000 beneficiaries in five additional districts that were not part of the original project plan.
In 2014 US$7 million was approved by Bank`s Board of Directors to kick start the original project initiated by the International Development Association (IDA) in support of Sierra Leone`s efforts to create strong building blocks for a social safety net system that would identify and deliver cash transfers to poor and vulnerable households.
The implementing phase started with four districts - Kono, Bombali, Moyamba and Western Rural - where 12,000 extremely poor families benefitted from the project, according to the World Bank statement.
Francis Ato Brown, World Bank Country manager, observed that the social safety net system was proving very useful for Sierra Leone, “because it reaches the poorest families whose situation has been worsened by the negative impact of the Ebola Virus Disease.”
The World Bank-funded project also aims at ensuring efficient implementation and the provision of capacity building for key stakeholders at both central and local levels, while scaling up programme management and improving institutional activities such as training of staff, providing equipment and monitoring and evaluation.
Nina Rosas, the World Bank task leader of the project, was quoted saying in the statement: “The Social Safety Nets Project is benefitting poor households in sierra Leone through the women who tend to spend the money in ways that benefit the family. It enables them to buy food, send their children to school, access basic health facilities and protect their assets such as livestock.”
She added: “The new grant will benefit more poor Sierra Leoneans and will cushion the impact of the EVD on their livelihoods”
According World Bank estimates in December last year, three million Sierra Leoneans were living in extreme poverty and the bulk of that number is in the northern part of the country.
(C) Politico 11/08/15
