Poverty is very difficult to define. According to The Complete English Language Companion Dictionary by Geddes & Grosset, “Poverty is the condition of being poor, scarcity”.
United Nations Department of Public Information (1996) described poverty as having various manifestations which include: lack of income and productive resources sufficient to ensure a sustainable livelihood, hunger and malnutrition, ill health, limited or lack of access to education, and other basic services, increasing morbidity and morality from illness, homelessness, and inadequate housing, unsafe environments and social discrimination and exclusion. Poverty is also characterized by lack of participation in decision making and in civil, social and cultural life.
Poverty is evil and satanic because is a condition of deprivation and lack of basic needs of life. When one is poor, he or she will be unable to provide him or herself the three (3) basic necessities of life. Such as food, shelter and clothing.
The absence of the social amenities including water, electricity, access roads, industries, recreational centres amongst others in the rural areas are making the living condition so hard for the rural people.
The basic occupation in the rural communities is agriculture, because of non accessibility of loan facilities, use of crude implements, non availability of storage system and others made the agricultural sector less attractive in the rural setting.
There is so much poverty in the rural communities. Men, women and children who are living in the rural areas find it difficult to eat three (3) square meals. Living condition is hard and tough.
Local government administrators should live upto their expectation in discharging of their statutory functions to ensure that rural dwellers live a better life. The local government system which has the responsibility of bringing development to the door steps of the local peoples should consider the following poverty alleviation strategies in the rural areas:
- Provision of soft micro loans
- Introduction of skills acquisition
- Formation of cooperative society
- Building of low cost houses
- Provision of electricity and water supply
- Construction of access roads and several other developmental strategies. If government at all levels adhere to these strategies and find ways of implementing them, poverty in the rural areas will reduce drastically. ###
Damiete West
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