Enugu State Governor, Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi has called on the youth of the state to embrace all the opportunities provided by the state government’s empowerment programmes to enhance their economy and bridge the wide gap between the rich and the poor in society.
Ugwuanyi, who emphasised that the only key to economic development of any state or nation was development of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises, encouraged the youth to make good use of the opportunities available at the Enugu State MSMES Centre to develop themselves.
The governor made the call while declaring open the Enugu State Government’s Citizens Engagement programme, organised by the state ministry of Budget and Planning, aimed at harnessing inputs from the people of Enugu State in the preparation for the state 2023 budget.
Ugwuanyi, represented by the Enugu State Commissioner for Finance, Adaonah Kene-Uyanwunne, described the citizens’ engagement as a family meeting where the government and the citizens interact freely on the stage of ongoing projects in their various communities and the ones expected from the government to embark on for the interest of the society, asked the people to freely express themselves.
She said that government grants are passed through SMEs as a platform to spread across board to all the local government centres, hence most governments are trying to empower their SMEs through the SME centres because they know that the youth, the upcoming or the middle scale entrepreneurs, do not have that much capacity.
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“It is non-partisan or a personalised thing or about you knowing anybody. In Enugu State we have World Bank programmes, youths participatory, the government has sent a lot of people to agricultural training from that of appeal programme, and a World Bank programmes that came on board after COVID for the poor and vulnerable to be able to stimulate their own economy after the COVID programme. What that means is that going forward, the poor and vulnerable are part of the budgetary provisions.
“We have three result areas Enugu State is using, the MSME centres, Fadama under agriculture and CSDA community and social development unit, and all of their programmes encompass the poor and vulnerable and under these, they are youth participations like MSMEs, helping businesses to thrive, open up small businesses, and even helping one to register businesses but the youth do not ask questions,” he said.
He also said that those government programmes were designed to enhance the economic growth of the people to bridge the gap between the poor and the rich in the society and encourage the youth to stimulate their own economy and also help them grow their economy.
Earlier in his opening address, the Enugu State Commissioner for Budget and Planning, David Ugwunta said that the Citizens Engagement was a sort of culture by the state government through his ministry to engage the people of Enugu State to participate and bring their contributions in budget preparation every year.
Ugwunta said: “2023 Citizens Engagement is looking at two important areas; it gave us the opportunity to present 2021 citizens accountability reports. The citizens accountability reports is a summary of the report of the audited financial statement produced by the office of the accountant general. So, do this citizens Engagement during the budget preparation process and when we finish’ the year ends, the financial ends then we come back and present a citizens accountability report, that is what this engagement has offered us today.
“On the second part it has helped us to harness input of citizens to the ongoing preparation of 2023 budget.”
According to the commissioner, “The discussion has been robust and citizens have been able to tell us projects that are of importance to them and like I said before, the governor believes in engaging with people, especially the citizens; do not forget that the citizens hired him to do this job; so if he does not feel their pulse; if he doesn’t know what they want in addition to other programmes that the government has been doing to engage with the citizens, he wouldn’t be able to provide and take care of them very well.”
