From 2006 to 2016, the Ministry of Social Development and Family Services spent $1.9 billion on food cards, also known as the Targeted Conditional Cash Transfer Programme, for the vulnerable and poor.
This was revealed yesterday in a Joint Select Committee on social services and public administration meeting chaired by Dhanayshar Mahabir at the J Hamilton Room, Tower D, Port-of Spain, as ministry officials were called upon to give an account of the effectiveness of the programme.
There are 27,000 card holders currently in the programme. Up to 2014, there had been 65,000 permanent and temporary card holders, but this was reduced by 38,000 in the last two years. The drastic cut in the distribution of the cards, valued at $410, $550 and $700, has saved the ministry $110 million annually.
The ministry had plans to start a biometric system in 2015 but this was shelved. Instead, a new system of payment facilitated through First Citizens will be rolled out in January at a cost of $1 million annually.
But former social development minister and JSC member Christine-Newallo-Hosein asked the ministry to reconsider the biometric system, which would eliminate duplication and eliminate fraud, corruption and abuse of taxpayers’ money.
The ministry’s acting chief technical officer Vijay Gangapersad told the JSC it would have cost the ministry $37.5 million to roll out the biometric system, while the financial platform, which included an SMS text messaging module and bank charges, would have amounted to $29 million annually.
Permanent secretary Jacinta Bailey-Sobers admitted the ministry had to put a hold on the biometric system because “we were actually paying $2.8 million every month to provide $1.7 million worth of cards to 3,100 beneficiaries.”
Member Rohan Sinanan queried how much the Government had spent on the programme and Bailey-Sobers placed the figure at $1.98 billion from 2006 to 2016. For fiscal 2016, the ministry forked out $260 million on the programme, she added.
Sinanan suggested the grants could be used to promote and purchase locally grown food, bearing in mind the country has been faced with a foreign exchange problem.