SURE-P Trainees Threaten Showdown Over Non-Payment Of Allowances In Benue

Over 3,000 trainees of Subsidy Re-investment and Empowerment Programme (SURE-P) in Benue State are grumbling over the non-payment of their allowances. The aggrieved trainees include graduate internship scheme interns and skills acquisition applicants.
Investigations reveal that about 8,000 applicants were recruited under the scheme in the month of February 2014 and since then it was alleged that only in March did they receive their stipends as four months arrears are outstanding.
A source disclosed to Sunday Mirror that the total emoluments indebted to the trainees is within the range of over N100 million and the state government seems to be adamant over the welfare of the recruits.
Sunday Mirror also gathered from the grapevine that some top government functionaries had connived and are alleged to have diverted the funds meant for the payment of the monthly allowances to personal use.
Checks further indicted certain ministries of complicity in the application of funds meant for the programme which has always been the controversy of the scheme since its inception in the state.
It could be recalled that the Benue State House of Assembly had in 2013 suspended the scheme in the state pending the outcome of a panel set up to investigate how its funds were being applied with Hon. David Iorhemba contending that the implementation of the programme in the state was nothing to write home about. And that the state was almost being swindled.
Meanwhile, the youths under the scheme in the state are threatening fire and brimstone if their allowances are not remitted through their various banks at the end of the month, saying that failure by the state government to comply, will make them have have no alternative than to resort to any means necessary to recover their entitlements.
Efforts to get the programme coordinator in the state, Mr. Samuel Utoo, were futile as several calls on his mobile line were not returned.