Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox says ef­forts to erad­i­cate pover­ty and re­duce in­equal­i­ty in T&T are con­tin­u­ing. She added that the im­pact of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic un­cov­ered widen­ing gaps among so­cial class­es.

Cox, who was speak­ing at the Unit­ed Na­tion’s ses­sion of the Com­mis­sion for So­cial De­vel­op­ment at the UN Head­quar­ters in New York yes­ter­day, said among the sev­er­al mea­sures be­ing tak­en are the es­tab­lish­ment of a na­tion­al reg­is­ter of vul­ner­a­ble per­sons and a na­tion­al pover­ty re­duc­tion strat­e­gy.

“The Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go has been work­ing in tan­dem with civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions and oth­er state part­ners to col­lab­o­rate on a num­ber of pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion ini­tia­tives with­in the so­cial pro­tec­tion sys­tem,” she said.

“Ad­di­tion­al­ly, we have em­ployed ro­bust mea­sure­ment tech­niques to clin­i­cal­ly as­sess the im­pact of the coun­try’s so­cial pro­gramme in­ter­ven­tions on mul­ti­di­men­sion­al pover­ty and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty re­duc­tion.”

Last year, the min­istry con­duct­ed a sur­vey aimed at col­lect­ing da­ta on peo­ple and house­holds to en­able a more fo­cused ap­proach to pro­vid­ing re­sources.

Cox added: “Trinidad and To­ba­go al­so reaf­firms its com­mit­ment to re­duc­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic in­equal­i­ty through the em­pow­er­ment of our vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens. Con­se­quent­ly, the Sow­ing Em­pow­er­ment through En­tre­pre­neur­ial De­vel­op­ment (SEED) pro­gramme pro­vides a fund­ing mech­a­nism for re­cip­i­ents of so­cial wel­fare who have shown in­ter­est in start­ing or im­prov­ing their busi­ness­es but who are un­able to gain ac­cess to fund­ing of their own. These grants help to fos­ter self-suf­fi­cien­cy and in­de­pen­dent liv­ing.” 

She said T&T has col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Unit­ed Na­tions on a tar­get­ed ap­proach to equal­i­ty and well-be­ing.

“We have en­tered in­to a five-year cy­cle to es­tab­lish a new co­op­er­a­tion agree­ment with the Unit­ed Na­tions coun­try team, known as the Mul­ti-Coun­try Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Co­op­er­a­tion Frame­work 2022-2026, which fo­cus­es on equal­i­ty, well-be­ing and leav­ing no one be­hind,” Cox said.

“It is note­wor­thy that this sus­tained part­ner­ship has fa­cil­i­tat­ed cru­cial sup­port and as­sis­tance in ad­dress­ing key na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment pri­or­i­ties and cater­ing to vul­ner­a­ble seg­ments of the pop­u­la­tion.”