By Ani Bassey, Calabar
The Cross River State government has commenced plans to register 30,000 poor and vulnerable households pushed into poverty as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is part of the Rapid Response Register of the Federal Government under the National Social Safety -Net Programme.

The programme is a partnership between the federal government and the World Bank and targets mostly urban poor households and individuals pushed poverty by the pandemic.

The programme will ensure that Vulnerable citizens are given some elements of support that gradually lifts them out of poverty.

Speaking in Calabar while giving an update of the registration, Chris Anake the State Operations Coordinator SOCU-CR said 108 enumerators have been trained for the exercise.

He said a community driven approach will be deployed because the community themselves know what makes people poor and the programme has nothing to do with politics or politicians.

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“108 enumerators have been trained across the state for the action to get more persons correctly registered into the Poor and Vulnerable Register and we are targeting 30,000 households.

“Due to the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic some self-sustaining low income households in semi-urban areas have come under hardship due to the loss of income.

“The federal government is aware of these vulnerabilities brought by the pandemic and in partnership with the world bank is targeting semi-urban households nationwide for some form of support.

“Households for the Rapid Response Register will be identified via a combination Satellite Technology, SMS enabled registration and physical verification on ground.

“We will also deploy a community driven approach and politicians are avoided completely.

“Communities determine the criteria that makes people poor, we undertake community profiling to ascertain the things that make people poor in each community”, Anake said.

He explained that the exercise offers the state more opportunities to capture more persons and include them into the State Single Register of Poor and Vulnerable persons.

He also disclosed that the state has one of the least numbers of persons in the National Single Register of Poor and Vulnerable Persons and this will help address this and also reduce the poverty index of the state.

The pilot phase of the project was done in Lagos and Abuja and it provided valuable lessons around communications and advocacy.

This helped in shaping the engagement and setting the tone for the countrywide implementation.