Cash transfer scheme benefits 5 600 families in Nkhata Bay

About 5 603 families in Nkhata Bay have benefited from the Social Cash Transfer Programme being implemented in the district with funding from the World Bank.

Nkhata Bay district principal social welfare officer and coordinator for the programme Abel Ndhlovu said on Friday that the targeted households are ultra-poor and labour constrained to support their livelihood.

“The main objective of the programme is to alleviate poverty, hunger and starvation in the targeted households as well as improve health, nutrition and education conditions of children living in those

households,” he said.

“Some of the beneficiaries have acquired assets such as houses while others are now able to feed their families properly by giving them three meals a day,” he said.

One of the beneficiaries, Zikwenda Mphande, 67, from Fwayafwaya Village, Traditional Authority (T/A) Timbiri, said he built an iron-sheet roofed house with the cash he receives in the programme.

He said he is also able to give his 14-member extended family three meals a day unlike in the past when they were having a meal a day.

“I am investing some of the money in village banks to ensure that we sustain ourselves in case the programme phases out,” Mphande said.

Ndhlovu said Nkhata Bay District Council disburses K40 million a month to households, and the minimum is K7 500 per month per household while the maximum is  K15 000 depending on the size of a family.

The programme  is being implemented in all 13 T/As in Nkhata Bay.