Workers in Delta State Ministry of Women Affairs and Community
Development took to their heels yesterday, when lepers marked this
year’s World Leprosy Day by staging protest, demanding increase in their
monthly stipends, feeding and payment of arrears.
They barricaded the new Anwai Road, where the ministry is located, and
vowed to remain there until their demands are met as officials of the
ministry took to their heels for fear of being brutalised.
The lepers, on the platform of Persons Affected with
Leprosy, PALs, who came from their settlement at Eku in Ethiope East
local Government Area of the state, accused the ministry officials of
tampering with their allowances. Some of the placards carried by the
protesters read:
“We are dying of hunger, our children are starving,” “In 2017 you must
pay us N15,000 or we return to the road,” “Is there any market for the
poor among others?”
A leper Chairman of the Eku settlement, Mr. Lucky Egbo, and Secretary,
Paul Oke, in a letter of reminder to the Commissioner for Women Affairs
and Community Development, Mrs. Omatsola Williams, insisted that the six
months arrears owed them should be paid. While also demanding increase
in their monthly allowance from N3,500 to N15,000, they said they should
be fed twice a day instead of once.
Contacted, the commissioner, Mrs Williams, said the lepers’ demands are
being looked into, adding that they were not abandoned by the Governor
Ifeanyi Okowa’s administration. She, however, said what was being owed
the lepers under the present administration was this January stipend,
saying that the five months being owed by the past administration was
being looked into.
Vanguard
