Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing ex­tend­ing the Salary Re­lief Grant to oth­er ar­eas apart from work­ers in bars and restau­rants, says So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son- Reg­is.

She said so in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day re­spond­ing to Op­po­si­tion queries.

This par­tic­u­lar grant, which is up to $1,500 for up to three months, was part of as­sis­tance giv­en by the state for work­ers whose busi­ness­es were closed dur­ing COVID-19 lock­down.

She said the Fi­nance Min­istry ad­vised that as at May 21 some 15,333 grants were paid.

The to­tal cost to tax­pay­ers was $21.17 mil­lion.

Robin­son-Reg­is re­it­er­at­ed oth­er as­sis­tance giv­en:

the top-up of 21,500 food cards cost­ing tax­pay­ers $17 mil­lion

as­sis­tance for se­nior cit­i­zens whose pen­sions weren’t fi­nal­ized, cost­ing $12.6m,

and $1.6m for dis­abil­i­ty grants for 488 peo­ple whose ap­pli­ca­tions weren’t yet ap­proved.

She cit­ed $15m worth of food sup­port mea­sures, $30m in grants to church­es and $30m for 14 cor­po­ra­tions to as­sist peo­ple.

Robin­son-Reg­is said 20,497 tem­po­rary food cards went to fam­i­lies cost­ing $31.3 m.

Out of the 1,012 rental re­lief ap­pli­ca­tions, 657 were processed and 52 fraud­u­lent ones re­ject­ed.

On Op­po­si­tion MP Rod­ney Charles’ con­cern that his area has 3,000 school feed­ing par­tic­i­pants and his area on­ly re­ceived 600 food cards, Robin­son-Reg­is said the list done on the sit­u­a­tion was two-fold.

She said some stu­dents al­ready have food cards and sev­er­al chil­dren from some house­holds are in the pro­gramme. Those who didn’t get food cards re­ceived mar­ket box ham­pers plus $250 gro­cery vouch­ers.

Al­so in Par­lia­ment, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds said one TTEC em­ploy­ee from a crew was sent for COVID-19 test­ing on May 12. With his re­sults pend­ing, on May 19, five oth­er crew em­ploy­ees were sent to Mt Hope.

How­ev­er, they weren’t test­ed. They were giv­en sick leave pend­ing his re­sults.

He said TTEC im­ple­ment­ed sys­tems to en­sure Health Min­istry mech­a­nisms to pro­tect em­ploy­ees and cus­tomers.