Ondo Unveils Residents Smartcard Tomorrow

Ondo State government will tomorrow launch its residents card initiative tagged ‘Kaadi Igbe-Ayo’. The multi functional smartcard, the first of its kind in the country is to facilitate the identification of all residents of Ondo State in order to deliver directly to them social and welfare packages of the government.

Tunde Yadeke, coordinator, Kaadi Igbe-Ayo project, said that the card is to serve as an interface between government and residents.

“Kaadi Igbe- Ayo which means card that brings good living, will help the state government manage the statistics of all basic features of residents and on the basis of this plan and deployed basic welfare and developmental projects that will meet the needs of all segments in the state,” he said.

He stated that the project which is an initiative of the state government is being executed by the State Information Technology Agency (SITA) and has presently captured over 695,000 residents in the state.

He explained that the card project will assist the government manage its social welfare services such as the ‘Abiye’ Maternal Care service where free maternal care is given to every pregnant woman that registered with any of the state Basic Health Centres. The card stores health information such as blood group, genotype, allergies, and weekly Ante Natal checklist diagnostics among others.

Also in Agricultural sector, it will help in monitoring the purchase and collection of subsidized agro-input and other essential commodities as well as the dispensation of other social services in the State.

He added that the smartcard will check abuses of various social services of the state to ensure transparency and efficient use of resources.

He noted that the state government has purchased card readers for various state owned health care centres for easy assessment of health related information stored in the card as well as at other points of social welfare delivery.

Other uses of the include, human resources monitoring in the public sector, it facilitates anti-corruption solutions in the public sector, it facilitates the categorization of persons for Governance processes such as taxation, employment and financial assistance.

The card will in addition facilitate the systematic development of database for efficient security and surveillance purposes.