The Cross River state Commissioner for International Development Corporation, Dr. Inyang Asibong, has said more than 36 per cent of those living in the state were living in abject poverty.
Asibong said this in Calabar during the flag-off campaign for initiation of Rapid Response Registrar (RRR).
“The latest poverty index in Nigeria is 40.1 per cent, Cross River is 36.3 per cent which is still very high and we promise to do everything within the reach of the ministry to step down the poverty index in the state.
“Our plan is to reduce that poverty index from double digit to single digit. Single digit means anything from nine per cent and below which is what developed countries have. Some have three per cent, and other one per cent,” he said.
He said those qualified to benefit from the programme were the low-income earners like vulcanisers, petty traders, taxi drivers, barbers and a host of other semi-urban poor and vulnerable people who were yet to benefit from the existing national social safety-net programme of the federal government.
On the criteria used to identify the poor, he said, “We have a checklist that we use. The checklist looks like a form where those identified from the community should fill. After that, we go ahead to conduct physical checks to ascertain the kind of houses those that we had picked, live in.”
