Ali­cia Llanos

The Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment has elim­i­nat­ed 3,000 peo­ple from the food card pro­gramme for abuse. This was re­vealed yes­ter­day by Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, dur­ing the min­istry's Di­rect Im­pact walk­a­bout in Bagatelle, Diego Mar­tin. The min­is­ter was joined by Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Em­manuel George and chair­man of the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion An­tho­ny Sam­my. Ra­mad­hars­ingh ac­knowl­edged that the abuse of the food card pro­gramme had been ram­pant. He said the min­istry had start­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion to "clean up the pro­gramme," en­sur­ing those most in need of food cards were able to get one. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said to date, 3,000 peo­ple had been tak­en off the pro­gramme for var­i­ous abus­es, in­clud­ing ex­ceed­ing the in­come brack­et for those el­i­gi­ble for food cards and more than one per­son in a house­hold hold­ing a food card.

He said an ad­di­tion­al 499 peo­ple had come off the pro­gramme af­ter tak­ing part in the min­istry's Rise Up Pro­gramme, which pro­vid­ed train­ing and em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said 7,500 peo­ple were now on the food card pro­gramme. He said the min­istry was work­ing to re­duce this num­ber, say­ing it could not af­ford to "cre­ate a wel­fare state." Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the min­istry had award­ed a to­tal of $16 mil­lion in small grants, in­clud­ing the food card pro­gramme and Mi­cro En­ter­prise Grant. He said the min­istry had spent a fur­ther $5 mil­lion on child pro­tec­tive ser­vices. Pressed as to how much he would re­quest for the 2011/2012 bud­get, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said he could not give a fig­ure.