The Ondo government has began the process for the second phase of palliative distribution to vulnerable people in the state to cushion the effects of the fuel subsidy removal.
The State Commissioner for Information and Orientation, Mr Bamidele Ademola-Olateju ,made this known while addressing newsmen in Akure..
Ademola-Olateju said a total of 136,160 packed food items and over 5,400 bags of rice will be distributed across the 18 local government areas in the state.
The commissioner, who is also a member of the state palliative committee, said already, 23,900 bags of rice had been distributed across the council areas during the first phase.
“I told you that we are going to reach one million households. I want to inform you that we are on track. We engaged some vendors to help us package some food items like garri, yam flower, pupuru ( a traditional fermented African food made from cassava tubers).
”These vendors have now come back with this packaged food.
“So, very soon, in about a week, we will begin to distribute these packed food items. Most of this food will come in four -six kilogram packs.
“As at last night, we went to our warehouses, we discovered that we can distribute 200 bags to these food packs for every local government.
“But since we aren’t distributing today, the rice keeps coming in, who knows by next week when we are ready, we might be lucky that it will be 300 per local government,” she said.
Ademola-Olateju said in addition, the state had bought 10, 000 packs of indomie noodles to be given to primary school pupils in the state.
“In our palliative committee, we called permanent secretary of State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) to give us the list of primary school pupils in the state and we were given a population of about 192,000.
“To get this pupils, we will give at least, two packs of indomie noodles each. Even if they will benefit from the one given to their parents, we want them to know that government is doing something for them,” she said.
She, therefore, said that the palliative committee had directed all the stakeholders involved to ensure integrity in the distribution of the foodstuff, ensuring it spans across various political inclinations.
The state government, she said, will also begin the transfer of N10,000 cash transfer to the vulnerable.
”We are working on the modalities and compiling the names. The vulnerable, to us means, people above 80 years that have no people to cater for them or their children are too poor to cater for them; widows with young child; critically ill individuals and physical disability.
“We are going to begin the N25,000 transfer to 400 NANO businesses in each local government area of the state. This comprises people who sell pepper, roasted plantain by roadsides amongst others because these are the people we think N25,000 will mean something to,” she said.
The commissioner said that efforts were in top gear to begin the distribution of farm inputs to farmers in the state, saying it has bought tricycle, power tillers among others.
“At the beginning of this exercise, the Federal Government promised that they were going to buy 10, 000 CNG buses and distribute it to states.
“We are yet to get them, we understand that it won’t come easy because of manufacture and procurement delay but we budgeted from the palliative fund, for five CNG buses, three has been delivered and we are still waiting for the remaining two to come,” she said.
Ademola-Olateju said the government has cleared the backlog of salaries arrears allegedly owed all Local government staff, Primary school Teachers and Pensioners between 2016 and 2017 by the former governor of the state, Dr Olusegun Mimiko.
