Ekiti Rolls Out N12bn Economic Relief Programmes

Ekiti State government has unveiled a N12 billion economic relief package to ease the impact of the current economic hardship on the people.

The well-designed programmes approved by Governor Biodun Oyebanji, include the payment of one month salary arrears to state and local government workers totalling over N2.7billion. With this payment, the government has cleared the salary arrears owed to the state workers and will ensure the arrears of their local government counterparts are cleared this year.

An increase of N600 million per month in the subvention of autonomous institutions including the judiciary and all tertiary institutions was also approved by Governor Oyebanji to allow the institutions implement the wage award for state and local government employees.

 In the same vein, Oyebanji 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 and  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 sum of N1 billion is committed to improving food production, especially to embark on land preparation, driven by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security’s tractorization subsidy scheme, and 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, the government said, 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 the poultry sector across the value chain from production to processing; Feed formulation and artificial insemination (AI) training and support, among others.