No fewer than 3300 poor and vulnerable households are to benefit from the social transfer component of the Oyo State Covid-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus (OY-CARES) during the 3rd phase of its implementation via the state Cash Transfer Unit.
The State Coordinator, the Cash Transfer Unit, Mr Akintunde Gbadamosi, disclosed this during a one-day orientation training for the third batch of social transfer facilitators of OY-CARES across the 33 Local Government areas in the state.
Gbadamosi said the beneficiaries were drawn from all the 33 LGAs in the state from the data mined from the State Operation Coordinating Unit (SOCU), disclosing that a cash transfer of N10,000 per month to the beneficiaries in the 3rd phase of the programme would commence after the ongoing training of the facilitators.
He said the data from SOCU covers some categories of disadvantaged and vulnerable individuals ranging from the aged to the chronically ill, physically challenged, urban poor and widows.
The coordinator explained that the OY-CARES programme is an emergency operation from the Federal Government domesticated by the state government which is designed to support budgeted programmes of expenditures and interventions at the state level.
Gbadamosi noted that the programme targets existing and new vulnerable and poor households in the agricultural value chain, and Micro and Small Enterprises (MSEs) affected by the economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said: “The sum of N10,000 per month is awarded to be given for a year to the social transfer component beneficiaries to aid their consumption and reduce stress. The transfer, which is card-based, will be paid N20,000 bi-monthly”, he said.
The coordinator stated that the OY-CARES programme is designed to run for a period of two years (2022- 2024) and is being implemented using existing structures at the level of the State and Federal Government, without creating any add-on project implementation structures.
Gbadamosi stressed that the Oyo State Government, in the first phase, had 1,755 beneficiaries from 18 LGAs, 1,755 beneficiaries from 15 LGAs in the second phase and 3,300 for the third phase from all the 33 LGAs on the delivery platform of cash transfer handling Social Transfer (ST).
Facilitators were trained on how to organise and deliver sensitisation, data validation, and enrolment activities of Social Transfer at local government and community levels, ensure supervision and monitoring at the LGA level, and then collect, discuss, and possibly resolve reported grievances from communities over the ST process from community grievance persons in the community, among others.
In 2019/2020, a global pandemic called Covid-19 ravaged the universe, with a large proportion of citizens, especially the poor and vulnerable households/individuals, facing challenges on multiple fronts such as insecurity, loss of labour, income, food, etc.
Dominica Nwabufo
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