The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices is now open­ing the door for those peo­ple now un­em­ployed due to the pres­sures of the COVID-19 virus to ac­cess the so­cial sup­port grants even if they are not reg­is­tered with the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board.

In a re­lease late yes­ter­day, the min­istry said these in­di­vid­u­als can ac­cess the Food Sup­port, Rental As­sis­tance and In­come Sup­port avail­able to per­sons who have been re­trenched, ter­mi­nat­ed or were self-em­ployed and now have no in­come since on or af­ter March 1, 2020. How­ev­er, the min­istry said these self-em­ployed per­sons must not be reg­is­tered with the NIB.

It said fol­low­ing sev­er­al queries as to el­i­gi­bil­i­ty, it had be­come nec­es­sary to in­di­cate that mem­bers of sport­ing pro leagues, cul­tur­al artistes, those in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, taxi dri­vers, do­mes­tic work­ers and trades­men were among some of the peo­ple who would qual­i­fy for the grants.

The min­istry re­it­er­at­ed that once per­sons are able to pro­duce the re­quired doc­u­men­ta­tion, name­ly a na­tion­al iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card, a job let­ter or ev­i­dence via one ref­er­ee that they are self-em­ployed and no longer em­ployed or that they were re­trenched, ter­mi­nat­ed or have ex­pe­ri­enced a loss of in­come, they should ap­ply. How­ev­er, on­ly one per­son per house­hold is al­lowed to ap­ply.

It said al­ready, in ex­cess of 4,000 ap­pli­ca­tions had been re­ceived and were be­ing processed. It said ap­pli­ca­tion forms are ac­ces­si­ble for com­ple­tion on­line, via the web­sites of all min­istries, at lo­cal gov­ern­ment mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions and the so­cial wel­fare dis­trict of­fices and des­ig­nat­ed po­lice sta­tions through­out the coun­try.

It added that the pre­ferred method for the sub­mis­sion of ap­pli­ca­tions is on­line and sub­mis­sion via email but recog­nised there may be per­sons who have no ac­cess to the in­ter­net or scan­ning ser­vices. These peo­ple, the min­istry said, could re­turn com­plet­ed forms to the so­cial wel­fare dis­trict of­fices clos­est to where they re­side in dire sit­u­a­tions.

The min­istry said peo­ple re­quir­ing as­sis­tance to com­plete the forms can ob­tain this help same from the min­istry’s Call Cen­tre and through the TTCon­nect Chat Box fa­cil­i­ty for com­ple­tion of the form. In the com­ing week, the Call Cen­tre will be up­grad­ed to bring greater ca­pac­i­ty and an on­line fil­l­able form will be in­tro­duced to fa­cil­i­tate sub­mis­sion of the form on­line.