COVID-19: Ayade Releases N.5bn, 20 Vehicles For Rapid Response
. . . Inaugurates Task Force
From Bassey Etim, Calabar
Cross River State Governor, Professor Ben Ayade, has approved the release of N500 million and 20 operational vehicles for the state’s response team.
Besides, the Governor has inaugurated a task force to safeguard the state against the global scourge.
Speaking while inaugurating the committee at the open field of the Governor’s Office, Calabar, on Tuesday, Ayade appealed to the Federal Government to give special treatment to the state as a result of its strategic border location.
He said: “Cross River is an international border state, and with the incident in Cameroon, I call on President Muhammadu Buhari and the Minister of Health to treat the state in a very peculiar way. We need the obvious and express attention of the Federal Government.
“I challenge the team headed by the Commissioner for Health, Dr. Betta Edu, to work assiduously to ensure that all preventive measures against the spread were adhered to.
“We shall release the sum of N500m and 20 vehicles to support the activities of the response team. It is the desire of this administration to ensure Cross River remained COVID- 19-free.
“You are all aware that there is no unanimity about the history of this global pandemic but Cross River, as a state governed by two professors, we must find ways and provide a leading direction at the sub-national level.
“It is, therefore, our desire to ensure that Cross River continues to maintain zero incidences as far as this pandemic is concerned,” he stated.
Spelling out the mandate of the task force, Ayade said: “To achieve this, we are hereby setting up this task force whose core mandate is to guarantee the full implementation of the lockdown of our borders to ensure that medicines, food supplies and welfare packages are made available to our people.
Ayade mandated that the state is sensitive to the challenges of locking down, especially when people had barely earned their last salary, lamenting the effect of partial lockdown but assured of palliative measures to cushion the effects.
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He disclosed that the state has received the sum of N28m from UBA while still expecting support from Zenith Bank and First Bank as well as other corporate organisations will at this time come to our rescue.
