The To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) Di­vi­sion of Set­tle­ments and Labour made a pay-out of near­ly $1.25 mil­lion to 156 per­sons through the Home Im­prove­ment Grant Pro­gramme. An ad­di­tion­al $170,000 was dis­trib­uted to 17 re­cip­i­ents of the Home Im­prove­ment Sub­sidy Pro­gramme last on March 3.

This comes on the heels of an­oth­er cheque dis­tri­b­u­tion last De­cem­ber. Sec­re­tary of Set­tle­ments and Labour Whit­ney Al­fred urged the re­cip­i­ents to spend the funds wise­ly and em­pha­sised that the THA saw it as crit­i­cal that through the De­part­ment of Set­tle­ments it at­tempt­ed to pro­vide af­ford­able hous­ing for low in­come home­own­ers and al­so as­sist­ed ex­ist­ing home­own­ers to im­prove their cur­rent homes.

He re­port­ed that from Oc­to­ber 1, 2008, to Sep­tem­ber 30, 2010, 1,164 res­i­dents of To­ba­go ben­e­fit­ted from near­ly $9 mil­lion in grants, while 55 per­sons re­ceived funds from the $550,000 Home Im­prove­ment Sub­sidy pay outs. On the is­sue of low in­come hous­ing, Al­fred said it was im­pos­si­ble for the as­sem­bly to give every per­son a house and the THA had found oth­er means to en­sure res­i­dents of To­ba­go were com­fort­ably housed.