By Adeyinka Adeniran
Oyo state government on Wednesday approved the expansion of the State Social Register, a key repository for identifying the poor and vulnerable individuals eligible for various social interventions in the state.
The Acting Coordinator, Oyo State Operation Coordinating Unit (OYOSOCU), Mr Salami Ismail made the disclosure when the SOCU Team paid Advocacy and Sensitization visits to the Political Heads and Management of 12 local government areas that will participate in the 10th round Community Based Targeting (CBT) exercise in the state.
He said the expansion is in Governor Seyi Makinde’s efforts to prioritize the welfare of poor and vulnerable households in the state.
While sensitizing the Chairmen, Mr Ismail said the unit is saddled with the responsibility of populating the Social Register of the poor and vulnerable households in the state and it was established in the year 2013 with the initial funding by World Bank and later the Federal Government.
He emphasised the critical role of stakeholders at the local level, including traditional rulers, market women and councillors in the expansion process, which he said aims to ensure inclusivity and neutrality.
He said: “The expansion of the register will accommodate additional poor and vulnerable households as some have exited the vulnerability threshold while others have newly fallen into it.”
Mr Salami stated that the method of identifying all the poor and vulnerable households is a community driven process known as the Community Based Targeting (CBT).
He said the journey starts with the ranking of Local Government Areas in the state using a credible document endorsed by the state government, which allows selection of local governments based on their poverty status.
“The process of ranking all the communities in the local government areas through their poverty status is done with the help of the Community Based Targeting Teams (CBTTs) who are trained Local Government career Officers”, he said.
The CBTTs engage with community members of the selected communities after thorough sensitization and mobilization so as to elicit information by asking the members to identify the poor and vulnerable in their midst using their subjective knowledge of poverty during the Focus Group Discussion.
The Acting Coordinator noted that after the Community Based Targeting teams had successfully identified the households with the evidence of giving each of them its unique identification, the enumerators proceed to the households to capture the data of all members of the Household.
He reiterated that the Social Register is a comprehensive database which serves as the foundational tool for various Social Intervention Programs like, Public Workfare (PWF), Skills for Job (S4J), Conditional Cash Transfer and Oyo State COVID-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus (OY- CARES) intervention across the 33 local government areas because their beneficiaries were mined from the Register domiciled and maintained by OYOSOCU.
He advised the local government Chairmen to adopt the Social Register for their various Local Government Administration interventions.
Ismail who commended Governor Seyi Makinde for the initiative, noted that this is the first expansion of the register solely funded by the state government without any support from the federal government or the World Bank.
In their responses, the Chairmen pledged their full support towards the success of the exercise and they also appreciated the State Governor,Engr.Seyi Makinde for demonstrating a strong commitment towards poverty alleviation and social inclusion in the State.
