The Ondo government says it has begun the process for the second phase of palliative distribution to vulnerable people in the state to cushion the effects of the fuel subsidy removal.

Information commissioner Bamidele Ademola-Olateju announced this to journalists in Akure.

Ms Ademola-Olateju said 136,160 packed food items and over 5,400 bags of rice will be distributed across the 18 LGAs.

The commissioner, also a member of the state palliative committee, said 23,900 bags of rice had been distributed across the council areas during the first phase.

“I told you that we are going to reach one million households. I want to inform you that we are on track. We engaged some vendors to help us package food items like garri, yam flower, and pupuru ( a traditional fermented African food made from cassava tubers).

”These vendors have now come back with this packaged food. So, very soon, in about a week, we will begin to distribute these packed food items. Most of this food will come in four to six-kilogramme packs. As of last night, we went to our warehouses, we discovered that we could distribute 200 bags of these food packs to every local government,” said the commissioner.

She added, “But since we aren’t distributing today, the rice keeps coming in. Who knows, by next week, when we are ready, we might be lucky that it will be 300 per local government.”

Ms Ademola-Olateju said the Ondo government bought 10,000 packs of Indomie Noodles for primary school pupils.

“In our palliative committee, we called the permanent secretary of the State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) to give us the list of primary school pupils in the state, and we were given a population of about 192,000. To get these pupils, we will give at least two packs of Indomie Noodles each. Even if they will benefit from the one given to their parents, we want them to know that the government is doing something for them,” she said.

(NAN)