Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo today said the Ministry of Finance has been instructed to simplify the distribution of the $100,000 cash grant after the current phase of the exercise got off to a chaotic start with hundreds of disgruntled citizens flocking distribution sites.
Mr. Jagdeo told reporters today that approximately 545,000 cheques have been processed, while some 200,000 cheques have been issued to citizens so far.
He said a number of persons have been showing up to distribution sites although their cheques have not been printed, thereby creating “some confusion.”
He stressed, however, that cheques for the $100,000 grant would only be printed upon the completion of the verification process, and as such, the number of printed cheques would be lower than the number of persons registered within the system.
“This is something we have to be better with. I don’t know how, because you can’t get to each home to call people to say, like if it is a big community, two, three thousand people, your cheque is not ready as yet for the 10 or 20 percent that may not be ready, please don’t come,” the Vice President said.
He assured that once the information of registrants is verified, the cheques will be issued to them.
“The Ministry has to improve on this. Ashni Singh has to take this personally and deal with it now that budget is over, and his staff can focus full time. They have to pay more attention to this. We want to get it out as quickly as possible, and with the least confusion. There has been some confusion but it is dictated by those sorts of things,” he added.
Mr. Jagdeo also spoke of the need for standardizing the process of uplifting the cheques with regards to the documents required.
At least two persons have complained publicly about their cheques being issued to the wrong person, but Mr. Jagdeo said he is unclear of the issue.
“If you give me just the name and I can verify it, and if it was issued then we have a problem. We have to fix it. So I would want them to build safeguards in the system to ensure this does not happen,” the Vice President said.
In the future, the Vice President said the Government is looking to use financial technological solutions to ensure the smooth transfer of the funds.
The National Assembly has approved $60B to facilitate the cash grant payments.
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