……Promises Aniocha South, North People More Dividends Of Democracy
Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta state Wednesday told Deltans that N1 billion is expended every month by his government to pay pensioners. The Governor also said that more than N300 million is spent on monthly basics to settle pensioners in the old pension scheme while more than is also spent to pay pensions of retired civil servants who were on the contributory pension scheme.
Governor Okowa who made this disclosure in a separate town hall meetings with the people of Aniocha South and North local government areas at Ogwashi-Uku and Issele-Uku, noted that the contributory pension scheme remains the best.
“When we came on board two years ago, we were told, government was owing pensioners over N30 billion, we have been paying and have injected a lot of money, so, at the end of every month, for the old pension scheme and the contributory pension scheme, we pay about N1 billion on pensions alone.”
The Governor while enumerating some of the achievements of his administration for the past two years, he assured the people of both local governments of his government continued commitment to delivery of dividends of democracy.
“We will not abandon the Ubulu-Uku road project, neither will we abandon any project. As we are constructing roads here, that is how we are constructing roads in all the local government areas of Delta State. I pray that our resources will improve for us to do more.”
The Governor stated that his administration was committed to empowering the youths to be entrepreneurs through skill acquisition programmes, noting that most of the beneficiaries of the empowerment programmes have become employers of labour contributing to the socio-economic development of the state.
“We have trained a lot of persons through the Skills and YAGEP programmes, 56 persons have been engaged through the skills program while another 22 were engaged through the agriculture program. In terms of road development in Aniocha North, we commissioned the Issele-Uku road, just yesterday. We also inspected Okwunzu road, Obomkpa/Idumu-Ogo road , Ukwu-Nzu, the State Leather Works Factory In Issele-Uku, Issele-uku Technical College.”
In the area of sports development, Governor Okowa said “We are making deliberate effort at improving sports, and bringing back the golden old days. We have introduced what we called the Principals’ Cup, and we just concluded the final competition last week. We have also made annual inter-house sports competition in primary and secondary schools compulsory across the state.”
On Security, the governor explained that, his administration was working with security agencies in the state to ensure that there is maximum protection of people and properties, assuring that his administration was committed to ensuring prudent management of resources to the benefit of Deltans.
