Fifty-two communities have so far benefitted from the World Bank-assisted social projects in Enugu State, an official said.
Dr Dons Eze, the Operations Manager of Enugu State Community and Social Development Project (CSDP), said this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Enugu on Thursday.
He said that the communities cut across the 17 local government areas in the state.
Eze said some of the projects included health and civic centres, electricity, boreholes, classroom renovation and road rehabilitation.
He said that 24 projects had been completed this year while 108 were still ongoing in the various communities.
According to him, N207 million of the N1.2 billion set aside for the projects, has so far been granted to the benefiting communities.
“It is a counterpart agreement between the state government and the World Bank. The community also pays. We expect the state government to pay N100 million every year.
“By the time the life of the project ends, the state government would have paid N500 million.
”The World Bank will pay N750 million, the community will pay 10 per cent of it in cash or kind.”
The operations manager said the communities were allowed to choose, plan, execute and monitor the projects under the supervision of the state and local governments as well as representatives of the World Bank.
“We give communities money to implement the projects themselves.
“We do not execute projects but we give them in tranches, because they will misuse very big money in their hands.
“So, we divide it into three tranches and to monitor how they are using it.’’
Eze said the money was being disbursed through community management committees set up by the communities, adding that the maximum grant to a community was N10 million.
On the criteria for selecting the communities, he said that interested communities had to apply and demonstrate the capacity to pay the counterpart funding.
The operations manager, however, commended the state government for attracting the project to the state, saying that it had impacted positively on the lives of the people.