Food-card re­cip­i­ents could lose their month­ly gov­ern­ment grant if they fail to meet new cri­te­ria set by the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment. So said Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, when he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress yes­ter­day as his min­istry dis­trib­uted around 200 tem­po­rary TT Con­di­tion­al Cash Trans­fer cards to peo­ple who had ap­plied for the grant sev­er­al years ago.

The func­tion took place at the Preysal Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said around 5,000 cards had been re­called from peo­ple who did not de­serve them. He said a sys­tem­at­ic au­dit re­view would be done every three months to as­sess re­cip­i­ents on the ba­sis of how they were car­ing for and ed­u­cat­ing their chil­dren and their in­ter­est in get­ting em­ploy­ment.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said over 600 peo­ple had vol­un­tar­i­ly giv­en up their cards to peo­ple who were more needy af­ter they be­came em­ploy­able. He urged the re­cip­i­ents to get trained and re-ed­u­cat­ed to be­come self-sus­tain­able. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said re­cip­i­ents should not see the food card as free food but as a tick­et to self-em­pow­er­ment.

Min­is­ter: Food card re­cip­i­ents must meet cri­te­ria