Toward achieving the Millennium Development Goals of poverty reduction, more than 5,880 households in Cross River State have been elevated from poverty status to an income earning point, Mr Roy Ndoma-Egba, Special Adviser to the Cross River Governor on National Donor support, made the disclosure in an interview with newsmen  in Calabar on Monday.

He said that the achievement was made through the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme (CCTP) of the state government.

He said CCTPwas an initiative through which the government raised people from extreme poverty status to an income earning point to achieve livelihood and income generating activities.

Beneficiaries of the programme are people who cannot afford the least education for their wards and have no access to health services, the official said.

He said beneficiaries earned N12, 000 monthly but the government dispensed N5, 000 and saved N7, 000 for them to open businesses at the end of the year.

Ndoma-Egba said the state embarked on the project in a bid to alleviate poverty especially in the grassroots and to meet its MDGs target.

“Our efforts towards reducing extreme poverty are very significant because we are very ambitious in Cross River State, very focused on our efforts of achieving the MDGs.

“We are currently driving the Conditional Cash Transfer Programme which started in 2008, with a total of 2,940 households on the 2009 CDS and then another 2940 that we started within 2008.

“So, we have close to about 5,880 households benefitting from the programme.”

Ndoma-Egba said that another group of 2,940 households were being sponsored by development partners through the office of the Senior Special Assistant to the President on MDGs.

He expressed the hope that the programme would benefit 45 households in every ward of the state by the year 2012.

“We hope that before the end of 2012, we should be doing at least 45 households per political ward because the baseline in 2008 gave each political ward an average of at least 50 households.

“So, we can move people from extreme poverty to income earning families to have savings that will enable them migrate to livelihood levels and then move towards an enterprise family.’’

The official said that the state Ministry of Social Welfare had designed a programme to train people on specific livelihood opportunities to empower them to set up income generating activities.

He said the government in its commitment to rural development, had provided hotlines to all communities for easy communication and a feedback strategy to monitor projects in the state.

“The hotlines are a number of telephone lines that the community members can call to report on the progress of work. It enables the communities to engage policy makers on what is going on which is very innovative.”

Ndoma-Egbasaid that community development was a participatory venture in the state where communities took ownership of all interventions and programmes of the government.

In the health sector, the official said the state had achieved great strides.

“We have achieved a 100 per cent immunisation in the health sector and in terms of de-worming, we are doing over 87 per cent.’’