16th June, 2016
Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), less privileged and physically challenged are among the vulnerable groups expected to benefit from the World bank additional financing approved for Edo under the Community and Social development Project (CSDP).
The Managing Director of CSDP in the state, Dr Gbenga Daodu, disclosed this in an interview in Benin on Thursday.
He said the disbursement of the fund would take effect from June ending, and it would have no fewer than 21 states participating in the World Bank total package of $140 million, an additional financing for the project.
According to Daodu, under this additional financing, 30 to 40 per cent of the disbursement will be channelled into the vulnerable group including the IDPs, the less privileged and the physically challenged.
He said the agency can leverage on the federal government social protection policy because it is in line with what the agency have been doing all this years.
“The priority of this additional financing now is on social protection, meaning we will be looking now in the angle of the vulnerable and the less privileged in the society.
“Remember we have the IDPs in Edo; we are going to go there to make sure that they benefit from this project, the orphanage homes, the physically challenge people, in most places.
“We have to educate the public institutions, to make sure that the physically challenge can access their buildings by way of constructing of rams, including banks.
“We have to sensitise them to actually do these things so that the physically challenge and the less privileged can be integral part of the society,” Daodu explained.
He said that 6,000 vulnerable groups were expected to benefit from the disbursement in the first three months when the fund becomes disbursement effective.
“We are expecting 2,000 to benefit from this project every month and as we go, we also expect that more people get to hear about it and key into it,” he stated.
The additional financing will last for two years in the first instance and can be reviewed later on, he said.
“The World Bank and the Federal Government can sit again to ensure there is continuity in the project.”
Daodu said under CSDP, which took-off effectively in January 2010, a total of 187 micro projects were executed across 141 communities in Edo with 10 others at various stages of completion.
He disclosed that N1.2bn was expended on these projects, adding that 800 applications have been received out of which 202 were processed and 187 attended to.
The manager assured that uncompleted projects under the programme would be completed once the additional financing becomes disbursement effective.