Minister of Local Government and Regional Development Nigel Dharamlall has told persons who were unable to benefit from the pay-out of the one off $25,000 Covid cash grant that “it’s time to move on.”
The Minister made this statement while responding to a question posed by MTV News Update after citizens raised concerns about being unable to receive their cash grant.
Minister Dharamlall however highlighted that they were able to meet some of the persons who missed the first distribution but at this stage it is more than likely this exercise will be abolished while assuring that more economic benefits are coming under the PPP/C Government.
“We should not let $25,000 be the reason why we get upset in the end all of us are going to benefit much more than $25,000 […] I think we would have to close that phase and move on to some other project,” the Minister said in an interview with MTV News Update.
Though Minister Dharamlall did not go into detail about what these other projects would be, he boasted of the ways the PPP/C Government has intervened to cushion the effects the Covid 19 pandemic and the war between Russia and Ukraine have posed to citizens.
Apart from this cash grant, the ‘Because We Care’ cash grant was reintroduced, every riverine household received $25,000 and also Government has removed taxes from a number of commodities.
The Covid cash grant was announced by President Irfaan Ali in 2020 to cushion the effects of the Covid 19 pandemic. With this benefit each household was entitled to $25,000. However, in many cases where more than one family resided in one home, only one of them received this benefit.
The other parties were required to fill up a “pink slip” and were told that they would be called back to uplift their $25,000 grant. A sum of approximately $4.5 billion was allocated for the first phase of the distribution with an additional $2.5 billion being approved by the National Assembly to continue the second phase.
