There at least 4,500 cit­i­zens still await­ing COVID-19 re­lief grants from the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, with the monies owed to them to­talling some $23 mil­lion.

This was re­vealed dur­ing the sec­ond Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tion Com­mit­tee meet­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing its ex­am­i­na­tion of the min­istry’s re­sponse to the pan­dem­ic. 

Soon af­ter the on­set of the pan­dem­ic, the Gov­ern­ment made avail­able sev­er­al so­cial as­sis­tance grants to as­sist cit­i­zens who were se­vere­ly af­fect­ed by the eco­nom­ic fall­out. The grants were to be paid for a three-month pe­ri­od and cit­i­zens had up to De­cem­ber 4, 2020, to ap­ply for them. 

“The out­stand­ing num­bers to be paid up to the pe­ri­od in ques­tion (No­vem­ber 30) is 4,721 per­sons. That is the out­stand­ing num­bers to be paid in­come and food sup­port (grants),” deputy per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the min­istry Vi­jay Gan­gaper­sad said dur­ing the ses­sion. 

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Sheila Seecha­ran in­di­cat­ed that these ap­pli­ca­tions had al­ready been processed and the min­istry was await­ing the re­lease of fund­ing. 

As of No­vem­ber 30, 2020, the min­istry has paid $351,928,855 in COVID-19 re­lief grants, the com­mit­tee was told. These were spread across the cat­e­gories of food sup­port, ham­pers, food vouch­ers, in­come sup­port and rental as­sis­tance.

Apart from the COVID-19 re­lief, Gan­gaper­sad said the min­istry’s month­ly ex­pen­di­ture on core ser­vices was typ­i­cal­ly around $475 mil­lion.

“The se­nior cit­i­zens’ pen­sion, we spend $350 mil­lion dol­lars on a month­ly ba­sis. The dis­abil­i­ty as­sis­tance grant- $47.9 mil­lion dol­lars on a month­ly ba­sis. The dis­abil­i­ty as­sis­tance grant for chil­dren $4 mil­lion on a month­ly ba­sis. The pub­lic as­sis­tance grant, we spend $7.8 mil­lion dol­lars on a month­ly ba­sis. And food sup­por,t $16.7 mil­lion on a month­ly ba­sis,” he said.

Dur­ing the dis­cus­sion, com­mit­tee mem­ber and op­po­si­tion MP Dr Lack­ram Bo­doe re­quest­ed that the min­istry break down the list of those who would have ben­e­fit­ted from the re­lief grants by con­stituen­cies and for­ward it to Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment.