Seventeen volunteers in the job creation scheme, N-Power will no longer be paid their stipends until they explain their absence from work.

Senior Special Assistant to the President on Job Creation, Afolabi Imoukhuede, made the statement on Thursday in Awka during a meeting between the state’s institutional partners and N-Power Monitoring and Evaluation team.

“The stipend for 17 volunteers from different states have been on hold since May due to the inability of their supervisors to see them at work for months,’’ he said

He said those who failed to take the scheme seriously will not receive financial rewards from the government.

He said that a common trend that ran in some of the states already visited by the M&E team was that volunteers, especially those in N-Agro, failed to keep consistent attendance book.

Imoukhuede told the stakeholders who attended the meeting that logbook was key and urged them to ensure effective monitoring of the volunteers under them.

He said: “This is a development-oriented programme for two years per participant.

“Whether the Federal Government wants to continue with it or not after two years, nothing stops the states and local governments from running their own N-Power, using the structures and resources developed by the Federal Government.’’

Azeez