Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Food card re­cip­i­ents re­main frus­trat­ed and up­set af­ter con­tin­u­ing to ex­pe­ri­ence chal­lenges with the sup­port pro­gramme just days be­fore Christ­mas.

Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ch­agua­nas West Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, said af­ter re­ceiv­ing his al­lo­cat­ed num­ber of food cards for dis­tri­b­u­tion, he was forced to lament the chal­lenges some re­cip­i­ents re­port­ed­ly ex­pe­ri­enced.

“I re­al­ly hes­i­tat­ed to say any­thing fur­ther but it seems as though we reached the low­est depths in terms of car­ing for the most needy and vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety.

“Af­ter lengthy de­lays and in­con­ve­nienc­ing el­der­ly peo­ple we are now plac­ing them in a sit­u­a­tion of fur­ther em­bar­rass­ment as the cards are not func­tion­al, so they are faced with shame. At least sev­en peo­ple in the last hour and a half called and in­di­cat­ed that their cards are not func­tion­al,” Ram­bal­ly said.

Yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices is­sued a state­ment ad­vis­ing that tech­ni­cal prob­lems con­tin­ue to plague re­cip­i­ents of Christ­mas food cards which were is­sued to Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment for dis­tri­b­u­tion. The press re­lease stat­ed that ef­forts were be­ing made by the fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion to re­solve the mat­ter.

“The min­istry has re­quest­ed that First Cit­i­zens Bank Lim­it­ed con­ducts thor­ough tech­ni­cal checks on all the cards, so that the er­rors are re­moved and de­fec­tive cards could be re­placed by the Bank in the short­est pos­si­ble time. Giv­en these cir­cum­stances, Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment are re­quired to put lo­gis­ti­cal arrange­ments in place, to have all de­fec­tive cards re­turned as soon as pos­si­ble, so that these could be re­placed,” the min­istry said.

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment al­so as­sured that at­tempts will be made to have the prob­lem rec­ti­fied in a man­ner where clients will be able to con­duct busi­ness, free of er­ror and in­con­ve­nience, at all au­tho­rised mer­chant out­lets.

Re­peat­ed at­tempts by Guardian Me­dia to con­tact a rep­re­sen­ta­tive from First Cit­i­zens for a re­sponse to the is­sues raised were un­suc­cess­ful.