Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture al­lo­ca­tions have been re­duced for sev­er­al min­istries, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, whose fund­ing for grants to the pub­lic has been cut by ap­prox­i­mate­ly $1 bil­lion.

Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Van­dana Mo­hit yes­ter­day as­sured so­cial ser­vices re­cip­i­ents that their in­creas­es would be paid and el­i­gi­ble re­cip­i­ents would not face cuts.

“You will re­ceive your in­crease and no cuts to el­i­gi­ble re­cip­i­ents will be un­der­tak­en by this ad­min­is­tra­tion.”

This came af­ter in­for­ma­tion about cuts in al­lo­ca­tions to some min­istries was not­ed in the Draft Es­ti­mates of Re­cur­rent Ex­pen­di­ture 2027. It was one of the re­ports laid in Par­lia­ment with Mon­day’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the 2027 Bud­get.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo pre­sent­ed a $63.368 bil­lion Bud­get for the 2027 fis­cal year.

In his Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Tan­coo an­nounced a $250 month­ly in­crease in the Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Grant, Pub­lic As­sis­tance Grant and Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grant, ef­fec­tive Jan­u­ary 1, 2027. The in­creas­es are ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit 124,000 se­nior cit­i­zens, 13,637 pub­lic as­sis­tance re­cip­i­ents and 28,000 dis­abil­i­ty grant re­cip­i­ents.

Guardian Me­dia sent Mo­hit a query about the rea­sons for the re­duc­tions in grant al­lo­ca­tions, whether the min­istry’s list of grant re­cip­i­ents had been au­dit­ed and could be re­duced, and whether an au­dit would be con­duct­ed ahead of the new fis­cal year.

In re­sponse, Mo­hit said, “Be as­sured that the so­cial ser­vices in­creas­es are re­al and will be ef­fect­ed with­out any fi­nan­cial chal­lenges.

“Fig­ures in the con­text of pub­lic sec­tor ac­count­ing must be care­ful­ly ex­am­ined and cur­so­ry su­per­fi­cial analy­sis must be to­tal­ly avoid­ed since it on­ly caus­es un­found­ed fear amongst the coun­try’s vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tion.”

Oth­er min­istries fac­ing re­duc­tions in re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture al­lo­ca­tions in­clude Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Works, En­er­gy, Ed­u­ca­tion, and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion and Skills Train­ing.

Al­lo­ca­tions to Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled cor­po­ra­tions were al­so re­duced.

Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les de­scribed the cuts as “a scan­dalous text­book ex­am­ple of po­lit­i­cal and ge­o­graph­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion be­ing prac­tised by UNC!”