Cit­i­zens of this coun­ty who lose their jobs as a re­sult of the mea­sures be­ing put in place to curb the spread of COVID-19 will be able to ac­cess a Salary Re­lief Grant of $1,500 a month for the next three months, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert an­nounced yes­ter­day.

The grant is ex­pect­ed to help over 80,000 cit­i­zens and will cost tax­pay­ers around $400 mil­lion, Im­bert said dur­ing a press con­fer­ence where Gov­ern­ment un­veiled sev­er­al mea­sures be­ing put in a place as part of a bil­lion-dol­lar plan to help cush­ion the eco­nom­ic im­pact of the strin­gent ac­tion be­ing tak­en to bat­tle COVID-19.

In all, the Gov­ern­ment is ex­pect­ed to need around $9 bil­lion to ad­dress the coun­try’s cur­rent eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion, in­clud­ing the dra­mat­ic fall in oil prices and the ar­rival of the virus on our shores.

Im­bert al­so an­nounced sweep­ing mea­sures to help busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als cope in the face of harsh eco­nom­ic times ex­pect­ed as a re­sult of the COVID-19 fall­out.

“The most im­por­tant mea­sure, how­ev­er, that the team has de­cid­ed is nec­es­sary, is a Salary Re­lief grant be­cause we recog­nise that be­cause of the mea­sures that are be­ing tak­en and be­cause of the is­sues as­so­ci­at­ed with this pan­dem­ic that there will be per­sons who will be un­em­ployed and what we have cho­sen to do, we have de­cid­ed that in­di­vid­u­als who have been tem­porar­i­ly un­em­ployed or tem­porar­i­ly dis­placed as a re­sult of the pre­vail­ing sit­u­a­tion will be el­i­gi­ble for a grant of up to $1,500 per month for a three-month pe­ri­od,” Im­bert said.

So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is added, how­ev­er, that Venezue­lans who have been work­ing here and lose their jobs will not be en­ti­tled to this grant.

Im­bert said he an­tic­i­pates in­di­vid­u­als em­ployed in the food and bev­er­age, hos­pi­tal­i­ty and en­ter­tain­ment sec­tors may be ad­verse­ly af­fect­ed by some of the de­ci­sions tak­en to help stop the virus’ spread. He said last week he had a dis­cus­sion with sev­er­al of this coun­try’s busi­ness cham­bers and called on them to have their mem­bers keep peo­ple em­ployed for at least four weeks.

Im­bert said the Salary Re­lief Grant will be ad­min­is­tered through the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB).

“The rea­son why we are us­ing the Na­tion­al in­sur­ance Board is be­cause they have a data­base on all per­sons with­in the PAYE (Pay As You Earn) sys­tem, which is hun­dreds of thou­sands of per­sons,” Im­bert said.

“So since NIB has all the da­ta on all these peo­ple al­ready, where they work and so on, who they are, iden­ti­fi­ca­tion doc­u­ments with re­spect to these peo­ple, we felt the best thing to do is to use the NIB.”

The Gov­ern­ment will sup­ply the fund­ing to the NIB, he said.

Im­bert said the de­tails and the qual­i­fi­ca­tion cri­te­ria for the grant will be de­cid­ed over the next sev­en days.

“We recog­nise that peo­ple will be go­ing through hard­ship in this pe­ri­od and we thought as a Gov­ern­ment, we had to do this,” Im­bert said.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley al­so said while the NIB and its data­base is be­ing used, the Gov­ern­ment knows that there will be peo­ple who will not be on the NIB list who may ap­ply for the grant.

“And one of the rea­sons for that would be per­sons who would not have been com­ply­ing and what this sit­u­a­tion will do is those per­sons who are not on the list and were em­ployed and are now not cov­ered or iden­ti­fied on the NIB list that says some­thing for and about the em­ploy­er but such per­sons can ap­proach the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment for that so­cial de­vel­op­ment as­sis­tance but that ac­tion will iden­ti­fy per­sons who should have been on the NIB record,” Row­ley said.