Another 10,000 elderly citizens in Ekiti State would from Thursday begin to benefit from the social security scheme introduced by the Fayemi – administration under which indigent senior citizens are paid a stipend of N5,000 per month.
The Commissioner for Labour, Productivity and Human Capital Development, Mr Apalara Wole-Adewumi who made this known while addressing the press in Ado-Ekiti said this would bring the number of beneficiaries of the scheme to 20,000.
Mr Adewumi disclosed that the scheme which is an integral part of the present administration’s 8-point agenda is designed to curb poverty among elderly citizens in the state who had toiled earlier in their lives for development of the country and have nothing to fall back upon.
According to him, the new 10,000 beneficiaries were carefully selected out of 34,050 elderly citizens who registered for the programme across the state.
The commissioner noted that government decided to increase the number of beneficiaries to 20,000 in order to improve the level of coverage and ensure that a good percentage of indigent elderly citizens in the state benefit from the scheme adding that political affiliation was not a criteria for selection.
“I make bold to say that majority of those benefiting from the social security scheme of the Fayemi – Administration are PDP members. This goes to show that the programme has no political colouration of any type. What we merely considered is selecting the beneficiaries based
on the age bracket of 65 years and above and the absence of the source of income”, Wole Adewunmi said.
He disclosed that Governor Fayemi would formerly launch the payment of the montly stipend to the batch B beneficiaries of the Scheme at Omuo Ekiti on Thursday 24th May 2012
Last modified: May 22, 2012