Gail Alexan­der

A to­tal of 95,593 peo­ple in Trinidad and To­ba­go have been paid the two tranch­es of COVID-19 re­lief In­come Sup­port Grants to­talling $186.2 mil­lion—and on­ly 417 processed cheques re­main un­col­lect­ed.

“...And we keep ad­ver­tis­ing, ask­ing peo­ple to come and col­lect their cheques,” Gov­ern­ment House Leader Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day.

“We have done so from 2021 to 2022 and we keep reach­ing out to these per­sons to col­lect their cheques—417 processed cheques avail­able that were un­col­lect­ed.”

Robin­son-Reg­is was re­ply­ing to UNC MP Van­dana Mo­hit’s query on whether all the In­come Sup­port Grants un­der the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry’s Phase I COVID-19 re­lief sup­port pro­gramme were processed and dis­trib­uted to ap­pli­cants.

Re­ply­ing on the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry’s be­half, Robin­son-Reg­is said the min­istry has tak­en ap­pro­pri­ate mea­sures to no­ti­fy the per­sons in ques­tion that they should come to col­lect their In­come Sup­port Grants.

This was done via ad­ver­tise­ments on the min­istry’s so­cial me­dia and web­site plat­forms, as well as in the print me­dia, dur­ing the pe­ri­ods: Ju­ly 17 to 26, 2021; Oc­to­ber 7 to 20, 2021; No­vem­ber 22 and 23, 2021; Jan­u­ary 26 to Feb­ru­ary 2, 2022; and No­vem­ber 10 to 16, 2022.

“The min­istry in­tends to con­tin­ue reach­ing out to the per­sons whose cheques re­main un­col­lect­ed in an ef­fort to com­plete this ini­tia­tive,” Robin­son-Reg­is added.

Fol­low­ing Mo­hit’s fur­ther queries, Robin­son-Reg­is de­tailed pay­ments:

In­come sup­port giv­en for re­trenched/ter­mi­nat­ed/ in­come re­duced per­sons for an ini­tial pe­ri­od not ex­ceed­ing three months - 50,087 house­holds paid to date with ex­pen­di­ture of $154.8m.

In­come sup­port for those who were cur­rent ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the Pub­lic As­sis­tance and Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grants - 42,051 house­holds paid $22.5m.

Phase One In­come Sup­port for re­trenched/ter­mi­nat­ed/in­come re­duced per­sons for an ini­tial pe­ri­od not ex­ceed­ing three months for To­ba­go - 1,749 peo­ple cost­ing $5.2m.

“So, we paid 94,287 house­holds for a to­tal ex­pen­di­ture of $182.7m,” Robin­son-Reg­is added.

“In In­come Sup­port (Phase Two), we al­so paid 1,306 house­holds for a to­tal of $3.5m.

“There­fore, the to­tal num­ber of ben­e­fi­cia­ries was 95,593 for Trinidad and To­ba­go for a to­tal sum of $186.2 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing the to­tal ex­pen­di­ture for T&T.

“Con­se­quent­ly, all the process­es were done to en­sure that those peo­ple who ap­plied and were el­i­gi­ble for the grant were processed and all those el­i­gi­ble have been paid.”

On an­oth­er query Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh de­tailed mea­sures in place to en­sure that the is­sues re­lat­ed to the grant­i­ng of op­er­at­ing Li­cences/Prac­tic­ing Cer­tifi­cates to phar­ma­cies and the reg­is­tra­tion of new phar­ma­cists are ad­dressed to pre­vent fu­ture de­lay. He said the Min­istry is col­lab­o­rat­ing with the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Min­istry to de­ter­mine the leg­isla­tive frame­work nec­es­sary.