Ministry Of Women Aims To Improve The Lives Of 500 Social Welfare Recipients In The New Year
Ms Tabuya said they noted that some recipients were upset when they were removed from the programme because they had been in it for many years.
Wednesday 27 December 2023 | 15:57
The Ministry of Women, Children and Social Protection, plans to graduate 500 poverty benefit scheme recipients out of the assistance from next year.
Minister responsible Lynda Tabuya said the poverty benefit scheme assistance provided by Government was only to absorb temporary shocks such as loss of jobs and the COVID pandemic.
Ms Tabuya said once a recipient secured a job, they should gradually be out of the system.
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“We started off with 10 recipients from the HART homes and also our single moms this year,” Ms Tabuya said.
“They were in the welfare programme and we put them through the APTC programme for 12 weeks where they attended Engineering Certificate Level 1,” she said.
“They have now graduated out of the system and we hope to graduate 500 recipients in the coming year.”
She said the ministry’s goal in the coming year was to graduate people – from welfare to well-being, out of poverty to productivity.
“I just want to get our people to work. So let’s get to work!”
Ms Tabuya said they noted that some recipients were upset when they were removed from the programme because they had been in it for many years.
“One of the changes we have made this year is to ensure there was an expiry date for people on the poverty benefit scheme.
“That is what we are working on, cleaning up the system.”
Department of Children
Ms Tabuya said work on the setting up of a fully-fledged department of children was well underway.
“We will have a director of children as well as officers, child welfare officers who will be dedicated to the work of looking after children,” she said.
“Currently, we have our welfare officers who take care of our adults and children. Now we will demarcate that so that we have better service delivery for our people. We will have social welfare officers who will look after adults and then we will have the child welfare officers who will be trained to look after children at risk and children in conflict with law.”
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