The Federal Government on Thursday inaugurated Community Practice (CoP) to enhance implementation of the National Social Protection Policy (NSPP) the country .
The Minister of Budget and Economic Planning, Sen. Abubakar Atiku Bagudu, while inaugurating the community in Abuja, said that the NSPP was structured along four pillars of social assistance, social care, social insurance and labour market interventions.
Bagudu, who was represented by the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry, Mr Nebeolisa Anako said that the CoP would help to coordinate the implementation of the programmes in Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs)
Bagudu said: “MDAs, state and non-state actors have been implementing programs around these pillars in other to alleviate poverty but there are still critical gaps in linkages and synergy across programmes and projects with no formal interaction platforms in the MDAs that could bring together these various skills and specialties”.
He said that the Ministry had established a community of practitioners for social protection actors in MDAs for the implementation of NSPP.
The Minister said that the CoP would provide the platform to discuss progress, share knowledge and skills, exchange information and track the status of implementation of social protection in respective MDAs.
“The participants or members of the CoP at federal level were drawn from key social protection stakeholders from relevant MDAs, development partners and donor agencies,” he said.
Bagudu said that the establishment of the CoP would not end at national level as the implementation of social protection resides mainly at the sub-national level of government.
He said that part of the mandate of the CoP was to ensure that the CoP was replicated in states to facilitate progress of social protection implementation at the state level.
The Ministry commended all the development partners and the nominees of the MDAs, also the ministries considered to be relevant for the implementation of the social protection policy.
