Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vice (MS­DFS) Camille Robin­son-Reg­is is warn­ing church­es across the coun­try that they will be held ac­count­able to God if they mis­ap­pro­pri­ate funds aimed at help­ing the poor dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

In its lat­est so­cial sup­port ini­tia­tive, the Gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing $30 mil­lion over three months to over 30 faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions to help the needy dur­ing the con­tin­u­ing COVID lock­down mea­sures.

The fund­ing, which is be­ing pro­vid­ed through the Ec­cle­si­as­ti­cal Di­vi­sion of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and the MS­DFS, is meant to specif­i­cal­ly pur­chase food items to as­sist peo­ple in com­mu­ni­ties ren­dered vul­ner­a­ble by the lock­down mea­sures.

“We, there­fore, an­tic­i­pate that no one will be left be­hind,” Robin­son-Reg­is said at a news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day.

She said the move to utilise the church­es was to en­sure they reached more peo­ple on the “ground lev­el.”

But amid the good­will from the State comes strict guide­lines on the way the mon­ey is to be ac­count­ed for. The min­is­ter said each ben­e­fi­cia­ry of the grants will be re­quired to pro­vide a prop­er writ­ten ac­count with­in two weeks of dis­burse­ment of funds and “they have to keep the re­ceipts and oth­er bills and they have to sub­mit that with their re­port.”

Robin­son-Reg­is said while she is con­fi­dent in the faith of the re­li­gious bod­ies, they have all been asked to sign an agree­ment on how the mon­ey is sup­posed to be spent. She said if there is any breach the oth­er tranch­es will not be dis­bursed.

But she said ul­ti­mate­ly: “They know that God is watch­ing them” and if they de­cide to go against the agree­ment, “they will have to an­swer to God.”

Robin­son-Reg­is said last Sat­ur­day 20 church­es col­lect­ed their first cheques and ap­prox­i­mate­ly 11 are yet to do so. She as­sured most of the re­li­gious or­gan­i­sa­tions have been com­mu­ni­cat­ed with and there are no con­cerns, ex­cept for the Je­ho­vah Wit­ness­es who have to dis­cuss “ide­o­log­i­cal con­cerns” be­fore de­cid­ing whether they will ac­cept the fund­ing.

The min­is­ter ex­plained that while the mon­ey is to specif­i­cal­ly help the poor in so­ci­ety, the amount paid per body was cal­cu­lat­ed us­ing an al­ready es­tab­lished mech­a­nism for the al­lo­ca­tions and that was based on the reg­is­tered mem­ber­ship of each or­gan­i­sa­tion. She al­so gave a de­tailed per­cent­age of the mon­ey each one will re­ceive ac­cord­ing to the set cri­te­ria.

The one thing for cer­tain, she added, is that “no­body is go­ing to ask you what re­li­gion you are. The ob­jec­tive is to reach as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble.”

Robin­son-Reg­is said this mea­sure could al­so cap­ture any child who was left be­hind dur­ing the re­cent school feed­ing food card ini­tia­tive.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s news con­fer­ence it was al­so re­vealed that the MS­DFS will start pay­ment of rental as­sis­tance grants lat­er this week.

The grant is val­ued at $2,500 per month for three months and will be paid di­rect­ly to the land­lords of those un­able to meet their month­ly com­mit­ments be­cause of job loss or re­duc­tion in in­come as a re­sult of the COVID mea­sures.

Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Jac­in­ta Bai­ley-Sobers said there were about 1,500 ap­pli­ca­tions for the rental as­sis­tance and the min­istry will “be work­ing to be­gin pay­ing those land­lords lat­er this week, at least to start.”

Ac­cord­ing to Bai­ley-Sobers, there have been ap­prox­i­mate­ly 30,000 ap­pli­cants for over­all sup­port.

She said so far, 2,991 have re­ceived pay­ment and added that the min­istry is seek­ing the ser­vices of a pri­vate firm to help “speed up the process.” She said with that as­sis­tance, they will be able to process up to 4,000 ap­pli­ca­tions per week from this week.