St. Au­gus­tine MP Khadi­jah Ameen has called on So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox to ex­plain how $2.9 mil­lion in home re­pair grants were al­lo­cat­ed.

The St Au­gus­tine MP was re­fer­ring to the lat­est dis­tri­b­u­tion cer­e­mo­ny on Jan­u­ary 27 at the Up­per El Do­ra­do Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre.

MP Ameen ques­tioned whether the process was fair and trans­par­ent, ex­press­ing con­cerns that a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of grants ap­pear to have gone to mar­gin­al con­stituen­cies.

In her let­ter to Min­is­ter Cox, Ameen asked for “clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the spe­cif­ic el­i­gi­bil­i­ty re­quire­ments for these grants, as well as the process by which ap­pli­ca­tions are re­viewed and ap­proved.”

She said this in­for­ma­tion would help her of­fice bet­ter guide fu­ture ap­pli­cants.

MP Ameen al­so re­quest­ed up­dates on ap­pli­ca­tions for two grants un­der the Na­tion­al So­cial De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme: the Mi­nor House Re­pair As­sis­tance Grant (MHRA) and the Sow­ing En­tre­pre­neur­ial En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Grant (SEED).