No fewer than 1,638 people from over 600 communities are to benefit from the COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus programme in Kwara.
The Technical Head Labour Intensive Public Workfare Delivery Platform, Alhaji Shamsudeen Aregbe, disclosed this in Ilorin on Thursday at a one-day stakeholder’s sensitisation workshop.
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The workshop was organised for local government Managers of Labour Intensive Public Workfare (LIPW) for a period of 12 months.
Aregbe said that LIPW would provide immediate employment opportunity in social sectors, to address the emergency constraints of labour loss among the poor and the vulnerable households as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He said the targets of the intervention are unemployed and unskilled youth and women from poor and vulnerable households, ages between 18 and 45 years.
The technical head of the Labour Intensive Public Workfare Delivery Platform explained that they are to possess the educational qualification of Senior Secondary Certificate of Education or below.
He said the selected beneficiaries upon being validated shall be enrolled into the LIPW programme in social services and infrastructure.
According to him, the LIPW proposed activities include improvement of public spaces, cleaning of public areas, garbage and refuse collection as well as waste disposal.
He said that LIPW activities also include traffic control, rehabilitation of classroom blocks and public toilets, repairing of clinics and primary health centres.
He said the beneficiaries are to be drawn from all the 16 local government areas of Kwara and after meeting some basic conditions they shall receive the sum of N10,000 as monthly stipends.
Aregbe said that prospective beneficiaries were derived from the World Bank Database (Single Register) of poor and vulnerable households and individuals.
The state Commissioner for Environment, Mrs Remilekun Banigbe, represented by her Permanent Secretary, Mr Abraham Ojo, described the CARES LIPW project as an auspicious strategy for poverty alleviation.
He said there is no gainsaying in the fact that the success or otherwise of the programme would be determined by the extent to which the stakeholders support and mobilise available resources to that effect.
Ojo charged beneficiaries to do everything within their capabilities towards ensuring that Kwara is a model for emulation by other states.
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