Ekiti: Gov Oyebanji Floats N12 billion Economic Relief Programme

By Ayodele Oni

Ekiti State Governor, Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji, has approved a set of relief programmes to alleviate the hardship being experienced by the people of the state in the face of the current global economic downturn.

In the programmes are payment of one month salary arrears to State and Local Government workers totalling over N2.7 billion.

With this payment, the Government has cleared the salary arrears owed to State Government workers, and will ensure the arrears owed Local Government workers are cleared this year.

Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Yinka Oyebode disclosed in a statement in Ado Ekiti on Monday that Oyebanji also approved an increase of N600 million per month in the subvention of autonomous institutions including the Judiciary and all tertiary institutions.

“This is to allow the institutions implement the wage award being implemented for State and Local Government workers.

“In the same vein, Governor Oyebanji also approved the payment of two months pension arrears owed State and Local Government workers totalling N1.5 billion, as well as N100 million monthly gratuity payment to state pensioners.

“There is an increment of the current N50 million monthly gratuity to local Government pensioners to N100 million. This brings total monthly gratuity payment to N200 million.

“The State Government has also committed the sum of N1 billion to improve food production, especially to embark on land preparation, driven by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security’s tractorization subsidy scheme.

“There is an input supply programme to support small scale farmers. Similarly,  the Government is also committing a whopping sum of N1.2 billion it recently got as first tranche of the World Bank-financed Livestock Productivity and Resilience Support ( L-PRES) Project to transform the livestock subsector.

“The money would be spent on empowering livestock farmers, boosting livestock productivity as well as creating a conducive environment for youths and private sector involvement in livestock businesses.

“This will include revamping all veterinary clinics across the local government areas and the state veterinary hospital; development of poultry sector across the value chain from production to processing; Feed formulation and artificial insemination (AI) training and support, among others.

“Additionally, the State is also launching a N500 million loan programme in partnership with Access Bank to support medium and small scale businesses.

“This is in addition to N1 billion cooperative fund to provide low interest working capital for cooperatives and members.

“These programmes will ensure that small scale businesses, a critical part of the State economy, also benefit from the relief programme, and help kick start the economy.

“The final set of the programmes include a continuation of the conditional cash transfer to low income households as well as the CARES programme which among other focuses on livelihood support, labour-intensive support, technology support for small businesses and support for agric produce and for which the sum N3.5 billion is earmarked.”