BY: VITALIS UGOH, Calabar
A Calabar based leisure/ travel club known as Express VISA club has commenced the distribution of food items to over five hundred households in Cross River State.
Speaking with journalists Calabar at Nyanhasang community Town Hall shortly after the club completed the first phase of food empowerment programme, the club’s President, Comrade Charles Itu, who unveiled plans of the club to empower about 500 households in the Southern Senatorial District of the state stated that the leadership of VISA Express club decided to embark on food distribution rather than limiting itself to hand sanitizers as a way of cushioning effect of Federal government’s directives that people should stay at home in order to tackle the spread of COVID 19.
It could be recalled that COVID-19 had brought misery and economic hardship to Nigerians and entire World.
He said that the club is aware of the fact that with the closure of water/ land borders by the federal Government to curb spread of the global pandemic, there is a cut in the supply /food chain, a development he said had denied people access to consumer goods and services.
According to him, “the items which include of bags of rice, life chickens,hand washing liquid soap, tomatoes, Maggi cubes,groundnut/ palm oil,detergent which worth millions of naira to residents of Nyanhasang community is a measure by the club to touch lives in the community due to to COVID 19 pandemic which inflicted hardship to the people.
“The world is going through tumultuous time at a moment, as a result of COVID 19 pandemic which had brought about increased poverty, hunger and starvation”
“To our us, this is just our little way of contributing our own quota towards the global effort to fight hunger and poverty known for being responsible for diseases like kwashiorkor and tuberculosis.
“Every year, Kwashiorkor and tuberculosis has been known to be responsible for about 8.4million death world wide. As a club, made up of young people.
“We cannot continue to fold our hands and see people die as a result of hunger.
Reacting on the issue, one of the community leaders in the area chief Festus Edem thanked the leadership of the club for lending their helping hand to his people so as to reduce the level of economic hardship brought into the land by outbreak of COVID 19.
