Akash Sama­roo

The Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices has apol­o­gised to the na­tion’s el­der­ly cit­i­zens for the time it takes for their se­nior cit­i­zens’ grant ap­pli­ca­tions to be processed.

Min­is­ter Don­na Cox said a short­age of staff at her min­istry is chief among the is­sues con­tribut­ing to the de­lay.

Dur­ing a sit­ting of the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee yes­ter­day in the Par­lia­ment, Min­is­ter Cox said there are cur­rent­ly 109,436 se­nior cit­i­zens re­ceiv­ing their grants with 2,500 peo­ple await­ing ap­proval.

The Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ch­agua­nas East, Van­dana Mo­hit told the min­is­ter that of­ten peo­ple were ap­proved but there was a long wait to re­ceive the pay­ment.

“And it runs in­to months, five, six, sev­en, eight months,” Mo­hit said.

“The prob­lem is not just about be­ing ap­proved,” Cox ex­plained adding: “The de­lay takes place be­cause there are checks and bal­ances there­fore we re­cent­ly signed an agree­ment with Im­mi­gra­tion be­cause we al­so have the check trav­el pat­terns, we al­so have to check with NIB be­fore ap­proval takes place and that is part of where the de­lay takes place, be­sides the fact that there are al­so staff short­ages at the min­istry.”

Cox said they have been lob­by­ing the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions De­part­ment to fill those va­cant po­si­tions.

Rudranath In­dars­ingh, the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Cou­va South, asked for a break­down of those va­can­cies.

“In So­cial Wel­fare Di­vi­sion, we have 216 po­si­tions, 123 filled, 93 va­cant. With re­gard to con­tract po­si­tions, 34 filled, nine va­cant. So what we have done though is we have some per­sons on short term (con­tracts) and we have some OJT’s to help us, but we still have to lob­by to Ser­vice Com­mis­sion be­cause we still have 93 va­cant po­si­tions on the es­tab­lish­ment.”

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for St Au­gus­tine, Khadee­ja Ameen told Cox that the prob­lem of staff short­ages is se­vere­ly af­fect­ing the el­der­ly in her con­stituen­cy as she claimed sev­er­al em­ploy­ees from the So­cial Wel­fare of­fice in Tu­na­puna have not had their con­tracts re­newed.

Mean­while, Mo­hit asked the min­is­ter to ex­plain the ap­prox­i­mate wait time for pay­ment from the mo­ment of ap­pli­ca­tion.

“Of­fi­cial­ly it is sup­posed to be three months, but in re­al­i­ty, it takes six months and up,” Cox said.

Cox said she is hop­ing a re­cent Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) signed be­tween her min­istry and the Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion will lessen the wait time for in­for­ma­tion to be shared be­tween both par­ties.

Yes­ter­day, the Par­lia­ment ap­proved the ad­di­tion­al sum of $348,172,814 be al­lo­cat­ed to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices.

In jus­ti­fy­ing the need for the sup­ple­men­ta­tion, Cox said her min­istry de­plet­ed its own funds to ful­fil flood grant pay­ments and the one-off, $1,000, trans­porta­tion grant promised to re­cip­i­ents of pub­lic as­sis­tance as promised in bud­get 2022/2023.

The one-time fu­el grant cost the State $151 mil­lion.