Thou­sands of vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing se­nior pen­sion­ers and re­cip­i­ents of Food Sup­port and Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance, will face a de­lay in re­ceiv­ing their month­ly so­cial wel­fare cheques for Oc­to­ber, due to what of­fi­cials are call­ing “un­fore­seen tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties” with the Gov­ern­ment’s cheque-print­ing process.

In an ur­gent pub­lic no­tice is­sued yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices con­firmed the dis­rup­tion, adding that “all ef­forts are un­der­way” to re­solve the is­sue as quick­ly as pos­si­ble.

The set­back af­fects re­cip­i­ents who still re­ly on phys­i­cal cheques for es­sen­tial grants, such as the Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion, Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grants, Pub­lic As­sis­tance Grants, and Food Sup­port.

“The min­istry is work­ing with all part­ners in­volved to bring about a quick res­o­lu­tion to the mat­ter. Once re­solved, the dis­tri­b­u­tion of cheques will be­gin with­out de­lay,” the state­ment read.

Of­fi­cials stressed that clients al­ready us­ing Di­rect De­posit ser­vices will not be im­pact­ed and will re­ceive their Oc­to­ber pay­ments in their bank ac­counts as sched­uled.

The min­istry apol­o­gised for the in­con­ve­nience caused and ap­pealed for pa­tience from af­fect­ed cit­i­zens, par­tic­u­lar­ly those most de­pen­dent on the funds.
The min­istry al­so used the op­por­tu­ni­ty to once again en­cour­age cheque re­cip­i­ents to switch to Di­rect De­posit, de­scrib­ing it as the safest and most re­li­able way to re­ceive grants.

“Clients cur­rent­ly on Di­rect De­posit will not be af­fect­ed by the arrange­ment and thus will re­ceive their funds di­rect­ly in their bank ac­counts, as is cus­tom­ary,” it said.

Ef­forts to con­tact Min­is­ter Van­dana Mo­hit for more de­tails were un­suc­cess­ful.