By; OLADELE ADEDAYO, Ado-Ekiti
About 8,850 Youths in Ekiti state have been penciled down to be receiving monthly stipends and other form of empowerment from the state government.
While another batch of 10,000 residents, mostly teachers are also to benefit from the free-eye test and free eye glasses programme set to take off in a couple of weeks.
The state governor, Mr. Ayo Fayose on Friday made the disclosure weekend at a meeting he held with all Principals as well as head teachers of secondary and primary school teachers in the state.
According to him, the ages of the benefiting youths shall be between 17-20 years, while 50 of them will be randomly selected from each of the 177 wards in the state without political consideration.
He stated that his decision to introduce the said empowerment for that category of youths was to alleviate the burden of sponsorship placed by the current economic recession on their parents, most of who he said are teachers.
The governor however promised that more support programmes such as provision of conducive environment in schools, employment of more teachers,provision of needed instructional materials as well as training and retraining were in the offing.
Fayose asked the teachers to further join him in promoting education in the state by developing a change of attitude in the way and manner of their doing things
He warned that negative attitudes such as lateness to school, absenteeism,poor school environment as well as complacency among others must stop
He announced that beginning from January next year,his government would commence full implementation of all environment laws in every part of the state,and that whoever is caught constituting dirt menace would be severely dealt with.
