Georgetown, GINA, June 08, 2005
- Citizens who have made claims and objections and who have alerted the Flood Relief Secretariat about omissions regarding Government's assistance to those affected by the flood will have these processed shortly.
This is the update by the Recovery, Planning and Implementation Secretariat provided to Cabinet through the Secretariat's Head Robeson Benn. The Recovery, Planning and Implementation Secretariat was established March last to oversee the implementation of the $2.8B recovery package announced by the President on March 18, following the disastrous January/February flood.
Today at his weekly post-Cabinet media briefing, Dr. Luncheon noted that the latest figures show that consistent assistance is being granted to citizens.
"Overall, data collection exercise has been essentially concluded and this has been the starting point for the subsequent activities that dealt with the printing of cheques and distribution," he said.
The Secretariat's report, Dr. Luncheon noted, revealed that practically all of the provided cheques were distributed. More than 53,000 out of a total of 61,000 cheques prepared were distributed to affected households.
There are 820 cheques being prepared for small business claimants. In the agriculture sector, in the categories of cash crops and rice farmers, about 4,500 are being printed, while 708 cheques have been distributed.
"Since the data collection exercise has been completed and the bulk of printed cheques distributed, the Secretariat advised Cabinet that there was sufficient resources now to revisit the issues surrounding the initial data collection exercise and subsequent claims, objections and omissions that have been brought to the Secretariat's attention," he said.
According to Dr. Luncheon, work is ongoing to verify these, subsequent to which cheques for these categories will be distributed.