SOCU Registers Households With High Poverty Index in Bayelsa

The State Operations Coordinating Unit, (SOCU), a national social safety-nets project has begun a comprehensive social registration of households with high poverty index across all communities in Bayelsa state.

The Coordinator of SOCU in the state, Felix Asingbi who stated this while speaking with newsmen in Yenagoa further pointed out that the basic purpose of the programme is to redistribute the country’s commonwealth by taking care of poor and vulnerable households.

According to him, the surest way to get this done is through the Social Register and the Rapid Response Register (RRR), stressing that a reasonable percentage of households have benefited from the RRR programme which is to care of vulnerable households during the Covid 19 nationwide lockdown.

Felix Asingbi also explained that the RRR is a programme designed by the Federal government to respond to emergency situations while the Social Register is to respond to social protection programmes and policies of government , adding that the Ministry of Budget and Economic Planning is the supervising ministry for the programme.

He noted that apart from taking care of households with high poverty index and an interventionist agency, the society register is also designed as a data base that could be used for economic planning across the country, emphasizing that this is why the registration started from the communities, local government areas, the state and the entire nation which makes it comprehensive enough for economic planning purposes and redistribution of the nation’s resources.

The SOCU state Coordinator disclosed that the communities will give 5-7 criteria with which they can identity poor and vulnerable households in thier communities, adding that poverty indices are different from communities to communities which informed the reason why SOCU always allow communities to define their own peculiar poverty index.

He dismissed the insinuations that politicians may end up hijacking the project for thier own selfish interest, maintaining that the project is designed in a way that gives no room for politicians to hijack the programme as it is typically a community based project and no list is being entertained from politicians.

Felix Asingbi, Coordinator, SOCU, Bayelsa state chapter || SOCU Registers Households With High Poverty Index in Bayelsa

Felix Asingbi hinted that as a response to the general notion that the #5,000 that would be given to poor households by SOCU is too small to be called empowerment programme, he said the Federal government intends to make it a consistent programme which is to stimulate consumption thereby stimulating the economy, urging households with high poverty indices to come out and register for them to benefit from the programme.