CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

The neg­a­tive im­pact of COVID-19 on the pock­ets of thou­sands in this coun­try is ev­i­dent in the long lines of peo­ple at the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (MS­DFS).

How­ev­er, the en­tire process can be done on­line, re­duc­ing the need for long lines out­side of gov­ern­ment of­fices.

For those go­ing the on­line route, ap­pli­ca­tion forms for ac­cess­ing the grants are avail­able on the web­sites of the Min­istry of Labour and Small En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment( https://www.molsed.gov.tt), the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices (http://www.so­cial.gov.tt) and TTCon­nect (http://www.ttcon­nect.gov.tt).

The grants be­ing of­fered by the gov­ern­ment at this time are in­come sup­port, food sup­port, and rental fee sup­port.

Fam­i­lies whose chil­dren are reg­is­tered with the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme and are not in re­ceipt of a food card will be el­i­gi­ble for re­ceipt of a tem­po­rary food card for a pe­ri­od of three months.

The sup­port cov­ers em­ploy­ers, em­ploy­ees and self-em­ployed per­sons who have been af­fect­ed by COVID-19 since March 1, 2020.

Once one goes on to ei­ther of the web­sites they are re­quired to have cer­tain doc­u­ments to be­gin the process.

They will need copies of their na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion (not Dri­ver’s Per­mit) for each af­fect­ed em­ploy­ee who is a cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go and a Cer­tifi­cate of Reg­is­tra­tion for per­ma­nent res­i­dents.

Al­so, Cer­tifi­cate of Reg­is­tra­tion/In­cor­po­ra­tion of the em­ploy­er and the ap­pli­cant would be re­quired to sub­mit a let­ter from his/her pre­vi­ous or cur­rent em­ploy­er as proof of re­trench­ment/ter­mi­na­tion or re­duced in­come ac­cord­ing­ly.

Where there are em­ployed mem­bers of the fam­i­ly, apart from the ap­pli­cant, proof of ac­tu­al earn­ings must be sub­mit­ted such as a payslip and job let­ter.

For rental as­sis­tance, ap­pli­cants are re­quired to sub­mit a rental agree­ment, ev­i­dence of most re­cent pay­ment and a copy of the land­lord’s or land­la­dy’s ID Card (pay­ment will be made di­rect­ly to the land­lord or land­la­dy).

Once the form is com­plet­ed, there is an email ad­dress to send it to, based on lo­ca­tion.

They are, sup­port­fory­ou.east@gov.tt (Barataria/Blanchies­suse to To­co), sup­port­fory­ou.north@gov.tt (Mor­vant to Mar­aval/Las Cuevas/Diego Mar­tin/Pe­tit

Val­ley/Ch­aguara­mas), sup­port­fory­ou.cen­tral@gov.tt (Chase Vil­lage; Ca­roni; Fe­lic­i­ty; Ch­agua­nas; Tabaquite;

Man­zanil­la; Cou­va; Tal­paro; Freeport; Clax­ton Bay and sur­round­ing ar­eas), sup­port­fory­ou.south@gov.tt (Pointe-a-Pierre to Moru­ga/Ica­cos/Rio

Claro/Guayagua­yare) and sup­port­fory­ou.to­ba­go@gov.tt (To­ba­go).

Ac­cord­ing to the guide­lines, when sub­mit­ting the com­plet­ed ap­pli­ca­tion by email, please en­sure that the “sub­ject” is sent in the fol­low­ing for­mat:

Area/First Name/Last Name /Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Num­ber.

If the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process con­duct­ed by the Na­tion­al Em­ploy­ment Ser­vices (NES), deems the ap­pli­ca­tion in or­der that ap­pli­ca­tion will be re­ferred to the So­cial Wel­fare Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices for fi­nal as­sess­ment and the pro­cess­ing of the rel­e­vant grants.

For self-em­ployed per­sons, the ap­pli­ca­tion must be sup­port­ed by two (2) rec­om­men­da­tions from ver­i­fi­able sources eg, Po­lice Di­vi­sion­al Com­man­der, School Prin­ci­pal, Se­nior Pub­lic Ser­vant, Com­mu­ni­ty Leader in Up­right Stand­ing, Pas­tor, Imam, Priest, etc.

If one is un­able to com­plete the process on­line then they can pick up a form at the near­est po­lice sta­tion and once com­plet­ed, drop the form at the so­cial wel­fare of­fice close to where they live.