FG To Give More Funds And Palliatives To Communities With Highest Cases Of COVID-19

Communities that have been worst hit by the coronavirus pandemic in Nigeria will be prioritized to receive more funds and palliatives from the federal government.

This was confirmed by the minister of humanitarian affairs, disaster management, and social development, Hajia Sadiya Farouq.

According to the Minister who spoke on Monday during the presidential task force (PTF) briefing on COVID-19 in Abuja, the government plans to support people in the affected areas with monetary support and other forms of palliatives.

Naija News recalls the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19, on Monday, 1st June revealed that twenty Local Government Areas in the country account for 60 percent of Coronavirus cases in Nigeria.

The 20 LGAs, which account for 60 percent of the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country, are in Lagos, Kano, Katsina, Jigawa, Bauchi, Borno, Edo, Ogun and the federal capital territory (FCT).

Hajiya Farouq noted that the government will use its structures and programmes to cater for the most vulnerable persons in the society while cooperating with state and international partners.

“The ministry is adopting a whole lot of society approach as its strategy to support the poor and vulnerable to regain their livelihood which might have been affected by this pandemic and the lockdown,” she said.

“The ministry will also continue to leverage the structures of its agencies and programmes to provide assistance, going forward, to the people that have been affected by this pandemic and the lockdown.

“We are also in talks with our partners, the United Nations for instance, to see how we can support the communities that are now greatly affected by the pandemic hardest, these 20 local governments that were mentioned and maybe even more, to see how we can support these households with also another cash intervention.

“And also on the humanitarian intervention, we are working now with the department of security service for them to provide us with information as it relates to communities that are most hit or that are facing a humanitarian crisis.”