Juliet Jacob Ochenje
The Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr.Betta Edu, has stated that Global Positioning System(GPS) will be employed to aid logistics and accountability to deliver palliatives to doorsteps of Nigerians.
The Federal Government on May 29, 2023, removed subsidy on petrol, leading to a spike in the cost of living of Nigerians. The President Bola Tinubu administration subsequently announced that it will be providing palliatives to ease the economic hardship caused by the decision.
In an interview with ARISE NEWS on Wednesday, Edu said the logistics concerning the palliatives needed to be reworked and that having a meeting point to collect the palliatives isn’t too ideal.
“Several methods will be explored in the humanitarian and poverty alleviation process,” according to the Minister, including expansion on some past programmes of the former president. She would also look back at the works of her predecessor to learn from the errors and build on the successes.
She said: “UNICEF will be working with us to set up a humanitarian situation room to monitor, prevent, mitigate and reintegrate people, when they have a humanitarian crisis, back into society.
Edu also spoke of her meeting with the head of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF)and mentioned the agency’s promise to come into the humanitarian and poverty alleviation space with over 270 million dollars.
She said,“We are going to create a trust fund for emergency response and humanitarian response in the country and create protocols for this response to know what to do when to do it and how to do it and who are the people who should be beneficiaries from it.”
Dr Edu further said the private sector be fully inducted into the humanitarian and poverty alleviation space,saying the government will deploy the same strategy as the private sector-driven Coalition Against COVID-19 (CACOVID) during the Covid pandemic.
