A COMPREHENSIVE Family Empowerment Programme will replace the Public Assistance Programme in order to empower the family to reduce poverty; while the Women of Worth (WoW) programme will soon accommodate men accessing loans.

According to a release, Minister of Social Protection, Volda Lawrence, told Probation and Social Services staff — members of her Ministry — last Wednesday at a first-quarter meeting that the

$6,500 given as Public Assistance to some 9,000 perennially ailing, destitute, differently-abled Guyanese, including children under the age of 14, must be eliminated and replaced with a more robust programme “to empower the entire family to reduce poverty.”

According to the release, the Government has expressed its unhappiness with the nation’s deepening dependency on Public Assistance. As a result it is moving towards transforming the current financial assistance package to include skills training, opportunities to secure jobs, micro-credit, provision of equipment to start businesses, and other forms of assistance, “instead of just financial support.”

CONDITIONAL CASH TRANSFER
Lawrence told the meeting that Guyana is hoping to introduce the conditional cash transfer system that Brazil has been using for 50 years, and which has been replicated in several Latin American and Caribbean countries.

“As Probation and Social Services officers, you will have to conduct an investigation on the entire family, analyse the case, and make recommendations on the needs of that family and how the Ministry could meet those needs, which may differ from the specific request of the family,” Lawrence said.

The release said Minister Lawrence challenged the officers to make efforts to link members of each family seeking assistance with the other services provided by the Ministry and sister agencies, including skills training through the Board of Industrial Training (BIT), micro-credit through the Women of Worth (WoW) Programme, and job placement through the Central Recruitment and Manpower Agency (CRMA).

She also announced that the WoW programme will shortly be expanded to accommodate men accessing the loan scheme.

BRINGING POVERTY LEVELS DOWN
“The idea is that we have to seek ways in which we can impact the families the most. So even though a parent may be working, that parent still cannot take care of his or her children because of what they earn, or maybe their employment is seasonal. We should be able to support them, because we are here to help bring the poverty levels down as well….

“We are going to make the focus on the family a reality this year; so, by year-end, we will replace the Public Assistance with something else that speaks to the roundedness of the family,” she said.

The Minister warned that sterner measures must be taken against parents and caregivers who neglect and exploit children, and use them for material gains.

She urged her audience to be more alert to the social needs of their communities, pointing to recent cases of school-age children becoming mothers.

“Why are things missing us, when we live and work in these communities?” she questioned.

While acknowledging that the system is broken and information may be short-circuited, she challenged officers to still “take a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to social issues”.

While the Social Protection Ministry has been hamstrung by a staff shortage, its staff complement will be boosted this year to adequately meet the social needs of the society, the release stated.

Lawrence challenged staff members to enhance their services through greater diligence, transparency, and commitment to the public welfare; and she also called for increased visits by staff.

DECENTRALISED SERVICES
She announced further that the Ministry will this year have a greater presence in rural and hinterland areas through decentralised services.

“We are hoping to make changes to the things we do, and how we do things, to have greater impact…we have to change our approach” to include greater collaboration and more networking with other agencies and corporate Guyana.

Lawrence added that the Ministry is working to improve the living and working conditions of officers, especially those working out of Georgetown, and several measures will be taken to improve the welfare of those officers.