Yvonne?Ba­boolal

Cab­i­net has al­ready ap­proved an elec­tron­ic sys­tem to fol­low the Bio­met­ric Smart Card which will mon­i­tor re­cip­i­ents of all so­cial grants, case by case.

If Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Chris­tine Newal­lo-Ho­sein gets a sec­ond term in gov­ern­ment, this sys­tem will be put in place soon af­ter.

Newal­lo-Ho­sein made the state­ment on Thurs­day when asked to elab­o­rate on the de­com­mis­sion­ing of 4,000 peo­ple from the food card (Tar­get­ed Con­di­tion­al Cash Trans­fer Pro­gramme) pro­gramme be­cause of fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ties.

The min­is­ter said names were sim­ply tak­en off the sys­tem as soon as they could not be ver­i­fied.

"The per­ma­nent sec­re­tary has to do an au­dit and we can't give de­tails as yet," she said.

Asked if the food card and oth­er so­cial grants had ac­tu­al­ly al­le­vi­at­ed pover­ty, the min­is­ter said they could not tell as yet ei­ther.

She said the new elec­tron­ic sys­tem would be able tell, as re­cip­i­ents of all the grants would be mon­i­tored on a case by case ba­sis.

"We will be able to gauge where you were at when you came in­to the pro­gramme and where you are at the present," she said.

The min­is­ter said while the Bio­met­ric Smart Card would be per­ma­nent, there were oth­er grants which were giv­en to help peo­ple start busi­ness­es, for in­stance, which were tem­po­rary.

She said while it might be too ear­ly to tell, based on feed­back she re­cieved, peo­ple were ex­cit­ed about the Bio­met­ric Smart Card.

"They are say­ing it will make col­lect­ing the grants eas­i­er for them."

Re­cip­i­ents of the food card did not wish to be iden­ti­fied. Oth­ers did not even want to ad­mit they had food cards.

One woman, who said many oth­ers shared her views, said the card had helped re­duce her food bill.

"I get $410 a month which is al­most half of my gro­cery bill. I buy ba­sic items with it and then put the rest of the mon­ey to get all my food sup­plies."

She seemed more cau­tious than re­lieved, how­ev­er, about the new card.

"I nor­mal­ly go to the post of­fice to get a dis­abil­i­ty grant for my son. I will no longer have to do it since the mon­ey will be com­ing on the card," she said.

"It would be safer too and re­duce the chances of be­ing robbed when I get the mon­ey."

How­ev­er, she was a lit­tle un­com­fort­able about hav­ing her fin­ger­print on the card and had ques­tions about whether she still qual­i­fied since she was no longer a sin­gle par­ent.

About the food card

In the 2008 bud­get state­ment, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning an­nounced that "a Food Deb­it Card has been in­tro­duced to help our needy cit­i­zens cope with the world-wide phe­nom­e­non of high food prices".

Man­ning said the arrange­ment would pro­vide a grant of $300, $400 or $500 for rel­e­vant vul­ner­a­ble fam­i­lies of three, four or five and over peo­ple.

The Tar­get­ed Con­di­tion­al Cash Trans­fer Pro­gramme was launched in 2006 and over 32,000 peo­ple ben­e­fit­ed, he said.

In 2006, the then min­istry of so­cial de­vel­op­ment launched the Smart Card ini­tia­tive which was lat­er re­named TT Deb­it Card.

Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, op­po­si­tion leader at the time, in her bud­get re­sponse in Oc­to­ber 2006 in Par­lia­ment, said the pro­posed cash trans­fer through a Smart Card, was ex­pect­ed to tar­get about 60,000 fam­i­lies.

"The Smart Card will al­low for the pur­chase of food on a de­fined list of items of $300 for fam­i­lies of three or few­er per­sons; $400 for fam­i­lies of four to five per­sons and $500 for fam­i­lies with six or more per­sons."

Prob­lems ex­ist­ed long be­fore

Sev­er­al ef­forts to con­tact for­mer min­is­ter, Dr Glen Ra­mad­hars­ingh, were not suc­cess­ful.

How­ev­er, ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports, in 2011 Ra­mad­hars­ingh called for an au­dit ex­er­cise in­to the food card pro­gramme.

He said then the min­istry was aware there were peo­ple on the pro­gramme who did not de­serve to be there.

"Per­sons who are dri­ving lux­u­ry cars have food cards and this can­not be. We're go­ing to bring in peo­ple who re­al­ly need it and take out those who don't," he said.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said he was shocked to dis­cov­er that un­der the for­mer PNM gov­ern­ment, "wealthy peo­ple" had ac­cess to the food card which is sup­posed to help the most vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple in so­ci­ety to pur­chase food.

"When we be­gan to clean up the pro­gramme, it was the su­per­mar­ket deal­ers who were able to iden­ti­fy many peo­ple who we put un­der an in­ter­nal re­view process and we were able to weed out al­most 3,000 per­sons from the pro­gramme," he said.

He said many su­per­mar­ket deal­ers were trou­bled that some peo­ple who were wealthy were car­ry­ing cards and they re­port­ed it to the min­istry.