The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MS­DFS) has said that fol­low­ing a sto­ry which broke on Tues­day, the Min­istry yes­ter­day reached out to the Casi­no Union of Mem­bers Club and Lot­tery Work­ers to seek ways to re­solve their is­sues.

The Min­istry said that Pres­i­dent of the Union Joshua John­son met with new­ly-ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, Don­na Cox, at her of­fice on St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain Wednes­day morn­ing.

At the meet­ing, John­son pro­vid­ed in­for­ma­tion on the plight of his mem­bers who would have ap­plied for both the So­cial Sup­port As­sis­tance grant un­der the MS­DFS and the Salary Re­lief Grant un­der the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Min­is­ter Cox as­sured John­son that al­though a sig­nif­i­cant amount of ap­pli­ca­tions were for the Salary Re­lief grant, which were be­ing processed by the Min­istry of Fi­nance, she would use her of­fice in seek­ing to ex­pe­dite those ap­pli­ca­tions which had not yet been paid.

She in­di­cat­ed that the Min­istry con­tin­ued to “work as­sid­u­ous­ly to com­plete all ap­pli­ca­tions for COVID So­cial Sup­port and that pay­ments will be made to all those who meet the cri­te­ria, in the short­est pos­si­ble time.”

The Min­is­ter asked John­son to in­form his mem­bers that the Min­istry was work­ing on their ap­pli­ca­tions and that they will be pro­vid­ed with feed­back in the near fu­ture.

The state­ment by the Min­istry added that she al­so in­di­cat­ed that while the casi­no work­ers would have ap­plied for the Salary Re­lief Grant, they were al­so free to ap­ply for food sup­port which was pro­vid­ed un­der the MS­DFS. The Min­is­ter end­ed by stat­ing al­though no de­ci­sion had been tak­en yet on re­lief for the 28-day pe­ri­od of re­stric­tions, the Min­istry aimed to en­sure that no one would be left be­hind.