CSR: Olam Nigeria scale up support for vulnerable Nigerians

Olam Nigeria Limited, one of the biggest agro-commodity companies in the country, says it is scaling up it investment in provision of support for vulnerable Nigerians displaced by conflicts, particularly in northern states.

The move, the company disclosed is a follow up to recent donation of relief materials valued at several millions of Naria to over 400 Internally Displaced Persons in some selected IDP camps in Kano state, and its environs. The items which are made up of raw rice, spaghetti, cooking oil packaged in various sachets, and maggi, were distributed to the vulnerable Nigerians by company, as part of the move geared at assisting the Federal and State Governments in tackling the mounting needs of IDPs, in the state.

Speaking to Business AM in Kano, Sriram Vikas Athaluri, branch manager of the company, disclosed that the gesture was carried out under the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program.The initiative was also designed to further support the government in the area of food safety for the vulnerable persons in the benefiting communities, who were put in a very difficult position by ravaging the Covid-19 Pandemic.

Sri Ram said the donated food items were targeted primarily at vulnerable women at the camps, as the prevailing situation in the selected camps indicated that women were the most affected by the difficulty being experienced in the camps. The items were distributed at the IDP camps situated in Mariri Maiduguri Road Kano, Hisba Office Dakata, Kofar Mata, Panshekara- Shagari quarters, and Salanta Panshekara, where the bulk of the vulnerable persons, are residing.

He stated that the company has continued to intensify the implementation of the WHO recommended guidelines in all its Sesame buying points to generate awareness about preventing the spread of Covid-19.

Olam had recently embarked on the implementation of an awareness campaign on Covid-19, in some selected states in the northern part of the country, as a way of assisting the Nigerian government to curb the spread of the disease.

The campaign is designed to address the identified widespread ignorance among a large segment of the people in the selected states, on the spread of coronavirus, as well as educating them on preventive measures to be adopted in controlling the disease, especially in rural communities.

In 2020, the company has also distributed cooked food to over 2,500 vulnerable people in the states where the awareness campaign was being mounted, in partnership with a private eatery outfit‘Big Bite’, under a special initiative conceived to cushion the effects of the challenges posed by the pandemic to ordinary Nigerians.

Providing insight into the food distribution, Sri Ram revealed that the company implemented the initiative in order to support measures being taken by the Nigerian government to tackle the suffering brought about on Nigerians by the pandemic, particularly, among people in the states where the campaign is being implemented. The food distribution campaign was also geared solely at helping the vulnerable segment of the society.