Welcome to the United Nations
Marion Sesay gossiped with her two work colleagues while they waited in the shade of a local money handler for their names to be called.
She and her friends, nurses at a nearby hospital, are entitled to hazard pay, an extra bit of money every two weeks to offset the risk of working in health care during Ebola times.
“The money is helping us greatly,” Ms. Sesay said. “We can use the money for our kids, for our families. The money is good, but we just want this thing to end.”
For the third installment of their hazard pay entitlement, Sesay and her national colleagues, some 16,000 recipients across Sierra Leone, received text messages on their phones: how much money to expect and where to pick it up with a security code.
The system, a mobile money transfer scheme, was implemented for the first time the week before Christmas with a great deal of satisfaction.
“This one (cycle) is better than the last one,” Sesay said.
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has partnered with the World Bank and the African Development Bank to streamline the payment process under the National Ebola Response Centre (NERC), the body overseeing the cash payments.
To read the full article, please click here.
Source & Copyright: UNDP