It will reach a million households, each of which will benefit from 90,000 of our francs, from a single cash transfer When positive cases of COVID-19 were declared in our country, the President of the Republic at the time announced certain measures to mitigate the effects of this pandemic on the population.

It is in this context that the measure was taken to grant a reasonable amount to very poor families, identified by the services empowered to do so. After the disbursement of 5 billion CFA francs and the signing of two agreements by the coordinating structure, which is the “JIGISEMEJIRI” social safety nets, the program is supposed to know its operational phase this year, Thus, to inform national and international opinion of cash transfers of the amount planned for beneficiary households, those in charge of the structures involved in the implementation of said transfers were in front of the media.

It was during a lively press conference last week at the Hotel Salam in Bamako. Introducing the press conference, the “social safety nets” program manager at the Ministry of the Economy and Finance said that with the advent of Covid-19, the country’s highest authorities had taken a number measures to enable poor households to withstand the effects of the crisis. And among these, the government emergency cash transfer program was ranked as a priority.

Following him, the coordinator of the “JIGISEMEJIRI” social safety net program Mahmoud Ali Sako gave a brief presentation of the phases which contribute to its implementation. According to him, a first phase had registered 352,900 beneficiary households. This phase was the subject of a data update, allowing the registration of 647,100 new households. It is always clear from Mahmoud Ali Sako’s explanations that certain criteria prevailed in the retention of beneficiary households.

These are: very poor households with food difficulties; households infected with Covid-19 disease and households whose activities have been strongly affected by Covid-19. Then, the program coordination team set up a mechanism for registering and identifying beneficiaries. Mohamed Bassirou Traoré of social protection finds the initiative very beneficial. It deserves to be supported, because there is a political will that goes with it.

To do this, the social protection services remain available for the implementation of this program. Note that the government program of emergency cash transfers to households impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic is supposed to be implemented from this month of January and continue until December 2021. And the transfer to beneficiaries is will be done electronically via orange money, BMS and BNDA.

Diakalia M Dembele

Source: Journal Le 22 Septembre