The So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry is re­draft­ing pol­i­cy on the Na­tion­al He­roes grant to en­sure it ap­plies to vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple—and an in­crease in abuse of el­der­ly peo­ple has been not­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od.

So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox con­firmed this dur­ing Tues­day’s meet­ing of Par­lia­ment’s stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee.

Her min­istry, which re­ceived $5.2bil­lion in the 2022 Bud­get, was ex­am­ined by UNC MPs Van­dana Mo­hit, Bar­ry Padarath, Dave Tan­coo, Rudy In­dars­ingh, Sad­dam Ho­sein, Rishi Seecher­an, Rai Rag­bir, Ravi Ra­j­coomar and David Lee.

Cox, who was asked about the Na­tion­al He­roes Grant, ex­plained that ap­pli­cants are nom­i­nat­ed by in­ter­est groups—sport­ing, cul­tur­al or com­mu­ni­ty or­gan­i­sa­tions—and are peo­ple who have made a con­tri­bu­tion to T&T in some way, but may have fall­en on hard times and need as­sis­tance.

Their nom­i­na­tion is ex­am­ined by a min­istry com­mit­tee which de­cides on their vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty based on a means test, earn­ings/bank ac­count or if they have a med­ical con­di­tion.

“At this point the min­istry is re­view­ing the grant,” Cox added.

She said that was be­cause it must be in line with min­istry’s man­date of par­tic­u­lar­ly see­ing to the vul­ner­a­ble and oth­er grants for such peo­ple who have made a con­tri­bu­tion in fields like sports, cul­ture etc could al­so come from oth­er min­istries such as Sport, Cul­ture, Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, Tourism and oth­ers.

Cox said her min­istry had to dif­fer­en­ti­ate since min­istry grants are par­tic­u­lar­ly for the vul­ner­a­ble.

She said, “We con­tact­ed key stake­hold­ers and we have tak­en their com­ments in­to con­sid­er­a­tion and the com­mit­tee is now re­draft­ing the fi­nal pol­i­cy and that must be in line with the min­istry’s fo­cus–vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.”

Cox al­so said an in­crease in el­der abuse dur­ing the pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od has great­ly ex­pand­ed work by min­istry staff at this time.

She lat­er told Guardian Me­dia that da­ta for 2021 re­vealed there were 154 re­port­ed cas­es of el­der abuse in pri­vate res­i­dences and 32 at homes for old­er peo­ple.

She said the min­istry’s re­fer­ral of these abus­es to the Health Min­istry, Po­lice Ser­vice, Na­tion­al Fam­i­ly Ser­vices and homes for the aged in­creased by 76 per cent in fis­cal 2021.

Cox added that ac­tion on the is­sue in­cludes seek­ing to bring law on the is­sue—cur­rent­ly un­der health—al­so un­der So­cial De­vel­op­ment and work­ing more close­ly with health to com­bat the prob­lem.

Cox said 109, 132 se­niors re­ceive pen­sion with 664 new re­cip­i­ents on the sys­tem re­cent­ly. Dis­abil­i­ty grants are paid to 2,611 chil­dren.

Cox con­firmed the In­come As­sis­tance Grants from her min­istry for ap­proved ap­pli­cants were all paid up at Sep­tem­ber.

Mo­hit lob­bied to have the min­istry pay rental as­sis­tance grants since she said ten­ants have been chal­lenged.

New In­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy so­lu­tions will pre­vent dou­ble dip­ping and fraud, Cox added.

Digi­ti­sa­tion will al­so help ap­pli­cants for Food Cards and oth­er min­istry ser­vices and there will be a link with MPs’ con­stituen­cy of­fices where many seek as­sis­tance to ac­cess these ser­vices.

Cox added the min­istry will al­so ex­pand ac­cess to ser­vices by re­lo­ca­tion of the Aranguez of­fice, new of­fice in San­gre Grande and changes with the Ari­ma, Tabaquite and Tu­na­puna.

Cox said the min­istry un­der­stood there were chal­lenges reach­ing some ser­vices but has got­ten good re­spons­es with its hot­line and oth­er fa­cil­i­ties.

There will be more peo­ple man­ning phones and an in­ves­tiga­tive unit will al­so be op­er­a­tional.

She said there are plans to re­move the so­cial­ly dis­placed from their cur­rent River­side car park lo­ca­tion and the min­istry is ac­tive­ly seek­ing a lo­ca­tion for them.