News this week that our social services received a boost to the tune of $8.3 million is extremely welcomed. The European Union (EU) made the hefty donation that will supplement Government’s Social Protection Policy and Strategy programme.
On receiving the funds on Wednesday, Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs Kirk Humphrey said: “It is clear to me, given the pressures that came to bear on the system, that this is necessary support. You may appreciate that in the last year, the support that the Welfare Department has had to offer persons in terms of the need to be able to respond to them, we were averaging, in terms of national assistance, around $900,000 to $1 million a year, and now we are averaging around $900,000 a month in support. So you would see that our capacity to respond has been under some pressure.”
The minister said in clear terms what we all knew and would have heard before.
The services of the Welfare Department in Barbados have always been over-utilised and financially under-resourced. The underprivileged in our society depend heavily on those much-needed funds in order to provide the most basic needs for their households.
For decades, there have been students who are outfitted and sent to school using the funds from the Welfare Department. There are adults who manage their homes from cheque to cheque with those funds.
Added to that, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown a massive spoke in the wheel of thousands. Reports back in 2020 suggested that the number of people depending on the Government for financial aid had increased. On many occasions, then Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs Cynthia Forde publicly acknowledged this fact.
In August 2020, Forde said: “This is a stressful time for all of us, but particularly so for those among us who are vulnerable, many of whom would not have been able to make it out to the supermarkets and shops over the last few days to prepare for this period.”
On Wednesday, Minister Humphrey was unable to say the current rates of poverty and vulnerability but indicated that during the course of the last two years, as the island grappled with the COVID- 19 pandemic, the number of people seeking assistance from the Welfare Department had nearly doubled.
“We have moved from about 3 500 persons to about 6 500 persons. There has also been an increase in the frequency with which they would want help. It is no longer a one-off. People are going to keep coming back. So there is that additional pressure on the system,” said Humphrey.
As the pandemic continued, Government was challenged to do more. Some of the country’s leading non-profit organisations pleaded with Government to dedicate more resources to fighting a looming crisis of poverty, hunger and homelessness overshadowed by the pandemic.
In October last year, Director of the Caribbean Anti-Human Trafficking Foundation, Dr Olivia Smith declared that in the midst of a massive national vaccine drive to curb the spread of COVID-19, scores of women, some with babies and small children, are starving.
“There are stories of women who can’t breastfeed their babies because they are hungry, there’s no food for the children who have to attend school and I am saying that while we are rightly focused on the COVID situation, equal focus has to be paid in this country on the food situation,” Dr Smith had said.
The story published reported that those with no immigration status in the country were particularly vulnerable, but for others working less than three days a week on minimum wage, the situation wasn’t much better.
To remedy the situation, Dr Smith called for the transfer of some COVID-related funds to assemble a COVID-related food bank.
She added: “This situation is so terrible and every day we seem to be focusing on giving vaccinations and nobody seems to be focusing on giving food. The basic needs of Barbadians and migrants alike have to be met. Food must be gotten to people because this is now a humanitarian crisis, whether we want to face it or not. It’s not an impossible task.”
It was indeed an impassioned plea from the director.
On the other hand, former Minister Forde had spoken out about how some people chose to use funds provided: “Some of them get their welfare cheque and then the next morning you see them with false eyelashes, gold earrings and fancy expensive shoes.”
We join Minister Humphrey in thanking the EU for the financial boost. We are hoping that those funds, along with whatever Government allocates to the social services for the next financial year, will be distributed and used wisely.
