By Emmanuel Una

Quite a number of factors have combined to keep a large number of people poor and downtrodden in Cross River State against the obvious fact that the state is endowed with diverse and rich natural resources.

Agricultural produce like rice, cassava, yam, cocoa, plantain, banana maize, among others, are produced in large quantities every year, yet so many people still strive to survive in many households. This is occasioned by the low prices middlemen pay for the produce, bad network of rural roads, frequent communal clashes and lack of employment for youths.

To alleviate these problems, state agency, Youth Employment and Social Support Operations, YESSO, has undertaken the task of compiling a register of the poorest of the poor to make it available to organisations and agency willing to provide succour to this class of people to use in getting to them and provide help.

The register provides location of different classes of poor and vulnerable people including the disabled, blind, unemployed and aged who need help across the 18 local government areas of the state.

The Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programme of the Federal Government, which targets these people to alleviate their plight by paying them N5, 000 monthly, uses this register and, in the past three years, more people have been identified and added to the register.

Mr Bolinwo Ofegobi, Cross River State Coordinator of YESSO, told Sunday Vanguard that more hands have been recruited to visit rural areas where the bulk of the poor reside to identify and register more people as it targets hitting one million of these people before 2020.

“We started from the poorest to the poor in registering people based on indices formulated by the National Safety Net Coordinating Office, NASCO, Abuja but in some communities, chiefs, politicians and prominent people insist on being registered first or no one would be captured”, Ofegobi stated.

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According to him, in some communities, people who are supposed to initiate programmes to help the poor ironically claim poverty just to get registered and, in the process, deny the poor what would have helped them get out of their situation.

He said the CCT has used the list to transfer N796, 330, 000 to 230, 000 households in the state since 2017 when the programme started.

Ofegobi said 40 households are selected in a community and 30 communities in each local government area and that there is quality control in selecting beneficiaries to avoid capturing those who are outside the target group.

According to the YESSO State Coordinator, more workers have been drafted as adhoc staff to screen beneficiaries across Cross River to increase the number of beneficiaries to one million before 2020 in order to reduce poverty in the state.

“Those of us seated in this room are privileged because we earn some income that cater for our basic needs but there are some people in rural areas who, from month to month, find it difficult to earn one thousand naira and, to such people, the N5, 000 given to them every month is a very large sum and some have used it to trade and make more money and transformed their lives””, he said.

He said the YESSO programme comprises of three components: CCT, Skills for Job and Environmental Beautification Project, saying the essence is to add value to the lives of people who need government the most.

“The Skills for Job trains unemployed youths to acquire skills and after the training empower them with starter packs for them to start their own businesses and we have trained two sets and we are trying to get the needed items with which to give them”, he said.

He said the beautification scheme engages youths in communities to keep the environment clean and fix damaged portions of rural roads.

VANGUARD