The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) is call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to do bet­ter by all the cit­i­zens who are yet to re­ceive their Salary Re­lief Grants, to help them weath­er the COVID-19 cri­sis.

Ac­cord­ing to a state­ment is­sued to­day by the par­ty’s Chair­man, Gre­go­ry Fer­nan­dez, six weeks have passed since the cri­sis be­gan and thou­sands of cit­i­zens are still wait­ing on Gov­ern­ment’s promised sup­port.

The MSJ chair­man says the slow pace of im­ple­ment­ing the var­i­ous so­cial and re­lief mea­sures is mak­ing an al­ready chal­leng­ing time even more un­bear­able for vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens.

The full text of the MSJ’s state­ment, fol­lows…

GOV­ERN­MENT MUST DO BET­TER ON IM­PLE­MEN­TA­TION OF SALARY RE­LIEF GRANT AND OTH­ER SO­CIAL MEA­SURES.

The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) is very con­cerned with the slow pace of the gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to im­ple­ment the Salary Re­lief Grant to our cit­i­zens who have been re­trenched or lost in­come due to COVID-19.  Many cit­i­zens are suf­fer­ing the eco­nom­ic im­pact of the Pan­dem­ic.

On Sun­day 17th May, Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Row­ley stat­ed that on­ly 12,000 grants had been processed.  The pri­vate sec­tor has in­di­cat­ed that over 100,000 per­sons have been af­fect­ed and the gov­ern­ment it­self had in­di­cat­ed it was cater­ing for 80,000 per­sons. This is 6 weeks in­to the lock down and clear­ly it shows an im­ple­men­ta­tion deficit on the gov­ern­ment’s part.

It should be not­ed that the gov­ern­ment’s ef­forts to send mon­ey to the church­es and oth­er NGO’s has helped but it is clear­ly not enough.

The fact that cit­i­zens have no mon­ey to spend equates to the econ­o­my re­bound­ing at a much slow­er rate.

MSJ ques­tions this PNM’s gov­ern­ment’s abil­i­ty to im­ple­ment or lack there­of which does not bode well for the fu­ture. If they are this slow to get this go­ing, what chance does the re­cov­ery plan have?

GRE­GO­RY FER­NAN­DEZ
CHAIR­MAN