Government to assess welfare needs

Government will be carrying out assessments of over 6, 000 people on welfare across the country “to clean” the list of persons requiring assistance.

Minister of People Empowerment and Elder Affairs, Kirk Humphrey, said this process may not reduce the number of people on the list, but would provide an accurate list.

He made this announcement during a press conference ahead of a meeting to establish the National Task Force with stakeholders and the Barbados Alliance to End Homelessness at the Radisson Aquatica Resort, recently.

Humphrey said Government’s welfare grant increased by 40 per cent, while the number of persons on welfare rose from just over 3, 000 to over 6, 000.  In addition, he noted that the Welfare Department paid rent for 300 persons across Barbados.

“That rent payment has increased between 2018 and 2022 by almost 80 per cent from $1.08 million to $1.9 million.  There is great evidence that there are circumstances that are driving people to seek housing and we must be able to address those circumstances,” he said, while noting that persons were still coming forward seeking assistance with rent.

The Minister explained that Government committed resources to go through the names of everyone on the list and visit the households to determine if they were still in a circumstance that required them to be on the welfare list and to be able to clean that list.

“It may not result in the list being a smaller list, but result in the list being an accurate list,” he said.

The Minister explained that the truth was there were persons who tried to “cheat the system” and deny others the opportunity to benefit from the limited resources offered by Government.

“We have people who present at Welfare, leave Welfare and try to present at the National Assistance Board and go to various agencies. That is why the Management Information Systems that we are now working on allow us all to plug in and allow us all to be ‘feeding from the same plate’, to be reading from the same page, and allow us to see who and where they are getting their resources, for the Government to make proper decisions.

“At the end of the day, it is about a collective response to a very comprehensive and complex challenge,” he stated, noting that some persons were also agency shopping.

However, Minister Humphrey pointed out that part of the assessment would also determine if those currently on the welfare list required a different type of intervention.

He explained that in some cases, rather than one person from a household receiving assistance, the circumstances may show that there was a need for two people to receive support.

The Minister appealed to those who were still on the list but knew they should not be because they were now working to stop. Failure to do so willingly, he said, would result in Government exercising its duty to stop the practice and be fair to those who deserved to be on the list.