Gail Alexan­der

Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to “bring on board” in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny Gas Strate­gies to as­sist with its gas val­ue chain amid the ill-ef­fects from cur­rent glob­al is­sues plus the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, who con­firmed the sit­u­a­tion in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, said Cab­i­net took the de­ci­sion at Thurs­day’s meet­ing. Young replied on be­half of En­er­gy Min­is­ter Franklin Khan, who was ab­sent due to ill­ness.

Yes­ter­day in Par­lia­ment, Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress whip David Lee had not­ed the col­lapse of oil and gas prices and glob­al eco­nom­ic down­turn, all sig­nif­i­cant­ly af­fect­ing the lo­cal down­stream in­dus­try. Lee asked if the Gov­ern­ment would be will­ing to of­fer short term re­lief pric­ing mea­sures as re­quest­ed by the down­stream­ers to pro­tect the en­er­gy in­dus­try and to save thou­sands of jobs.

Young said the glob­al en­er­gy sit­u­a­tion is in a dire po­si­tion, not on­ly with over­sup­ply but al­so deal­ing with low de­mand due to the pan­dem­ic. He said the re­quest to of­fer a short term re­lief pric­ing mea­sure was not­ed and the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny is work­ing close­ly with Gov­ern­ment and hav­ing ac­tive talks with down­stream play­ers. Talks on gas are al­so on with up­stream­er sup­pli­ers, he added.

While no con­ces­sions have been giv­en, he said Gov­ern­ment has been work­ing on the re­la­tion­ship with com­pa­nies and “very ac­tive con­ver­sa­tions” are oc­cur­ring, hope­ful­ly with pro­duc­tive ef­fects.

Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, Gas Strate­gies, based in Lon­don, pro­vides a range of en­er­gy-in­dus­try re­lat­ed con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices, in­clud­ing in­vest­ment and di­vest­ment de­ci­sions, project de­vel­op­ment sup­port and da­ta ser­vices.

Al­so suf­fer­ing ill-ef­fects from the COVID lock­down, UNC’s Cu­mu­to Man­zanil­la MP Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein said 1,000 fam­i­lies in her area haven’t got­ten food as­sis­tance due to slow process­es.

So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said it was recog­nised some fam­i­lies in the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme didn’t get Food­cards from their MPs. She re­it­er­at­ed mea­sures to cater to those who didn’t re­ceive. This in­clud­ed Food ham­pers and vouch­ers for food sup­port. Those who didn’t get Food­cards – 79,000 – al­so re­ceived $510 for three months. Mar­ket box­es will be giv­en to re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions to dis­trib­ute. Re­li­gious bod­ies are al­so dis­trib­ut­ing COVID re­lief.

To date, 19,9992 out of a to­tal of 20,500 Food­cards were de­liv­ered in batch­es of 500 each to MPs to dis­trib­ute.

Robin­son-Reg­is de­tailed con­di­tions to which re­li­gious groups had to agree to re­ceive the fund­ing which Gov­ern­ment is giv­ing them to dis­trib­ute to needy peo­ple. It in­volves a range of ac­count­ing pro­ce­dures rang­ing from giv­ing month­ly re­ports on num­bers who re­ceived their as­sis­tance and how much, to record-keep­ing, in­clud­ing de­mo­graph­ic in­for­ma­tion on peo­ple who got as­sis­tance.

Re­li­gious groups will have to keep some records for three years.