A non-governmental organisation, the Women Centre for Self-Empowerment and Development (WOCSED), has urged governors in the South-East zone to focus their development agenda on rural communities.

The National President of WOCSED, Mrs Onyeka Obi, made the call on Sunday in Enugu while reacting to the under development of rural areas in the zone.

Obi said that basic needs of life, which would help check current massive rural-urban migration in the zone, were lacking.

According to her, poverty and underdevelopment are glaring in most of the rural communities.

“South-East governors only concentrate their development works in the urban areas and townships neglecting the rural communities.

“They should go down to grassroots and provide basic amenities and set up industries in the rural areas to stop our youths rushing to the cities,” she said.

The activist also tasked the governors to address the needs of the rural dwellers including pipe borne water, electricity, good roads, health care and education.

“The governors must rise up to tackle rural project abandonment and corruption that had eaten deep in the local government system in the zone,” she said.

The president called on the governors to institute a conditional cash transfer scheme to indigent families in rural communities who cannot afford one meal a day and cannot send their children to school.