Derek Achong

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) has chal­lenged Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his Cab­i­net to at­tempt to sur­vive on the month­ly grants giv­en to pen­sion­ers and dis­abled per­sons. 

The chal­lenge was is­sued by St Au­gus­tine MP Khadi­jah Ameen and Ch­agua­nas East MP Van­dana Mo­hit dur­ing the Op­po­si­tion’s week­ly me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day.

Ameen said: “I chal­lenge any gov­ern­ment min­is­ter to try to sur­vive on a $2,000 dis­abil­i­ty grant. Put your­self on what a pen­sion­er or a dis­abil­i­ty grant re­cip­i­ent gets and then let us have a re­al re­view about so­cial wel­fare pro­grammes.” 

Ameen and Mo­hit claimed that since tak­ing of­fice, Row­ley and his Gov­ern­ment had tak­en steps to re­duce the num­ber of cit­i­zens who ben­e­fit­ed from the Food Sup­port Pro­gramme, with a fur­ther re­view in­to the pro­gramme be­ing an­nounced by the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices in Jan­u­ary. 

“This Gov­ern­ment is re­mov­ing per­sons from the so­cial safe­ty net and leav­ing them to wan­der,” Mo­hit said. 

“They are lim­it­ing ac­cess to the so­cial pro­grammes when it is most need­ed when per­sons are fac­ing high food bills and are strug­gling to pay util­i­ties,” she added. 

The duo sug­gest­ed that the re­duc­tion in the reach of the pro­gramme, cou­pled with an eco­nom­ic down­turn that be­gan be­fore the start of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, was caus­ing im­mense stress on women, who tra­di­tion­al­ly man­age food with­in house­holds. 

“Women in this coun­try are bawl­ing when they look at their gro­cery bills...We are see­ing now where peo­ple are liv­ing day to day, not month to month,” Mo­hit said. 

Re­fer­ring to a gen­er­al in­crease in in­ter­na­tion­al food and en­er­gy prices due to Rus­sia’s on­go­ing war in Ukraine, Ameen sug­gest­ed that fluc­tu­a­tions in im­port­ed food prices could be mit­i­gat­ed if the Gov­ern­ment had ac­tu­al­ly de­vel­oped the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor as promised. 

“Don’t come now and blame the prices on the war in Ukraine. We can­not con­trol the war in Ukraine but what we can con­trol is agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads, wa­ter sup­ply, drainage and ir­ri­ga­tion,” Ameen said. 

Ameen claimed that un­der the for­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment led by Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, nu­mer­ous ini­tia­tives were in­tro­duced for farm­ers, such as in­fra­struc­tur­al de­vel­op­ment and fi­nanc­ing arrange­ments through the Agri­cul­tur­al De­vel­op­ment Bank (ADB). How­ev­er, she not­ed that such ini­tia­tives were re­moved when there was a change of gov­ern­ment fol­low­ing the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion. 

“Those things do not reap im­me­di­ate re­wards and have to be main­tained,” Ameen said. 

Deal­ing with the safe­ty of women, Ameen and Mo­hit ques­tioned why pep­per spray has not be­come wide­ly avail­able af­ter At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi pi­lot­ed leg­is­la­tion for the same, last year. 

“Where is the pep­per spray? You keep say­ing it’s com­ing but it’s not reach­ing,” Mo­hit said. 

“You can have more and more leg­is­la­tion but that is nev­er go­ing to solve the so­cial is­sues, that this gov­ern­ment is fail­ing to deal with if you do not have ac­tion,” Ameen added. 

The me­dia con­fer­ence came a day af­ter the women’s arm of the UNC host­ed a demon­stra­tion out­side the Pe­nal mar­ket to protest ris­ing food prices and crime.