By Ken Richards (WINN): Some of the members of the country’s workforce who quality for payments from the Social Security COVID-19 Emergency Relief Fund can expect to begin receiving payments from next week.
Labour Minister Vance Amory, who is responsible for Social Security, has indicated that payments will be made to applications already processed, from next week.
According to the minister, employees at the St. Christopher and Nevis Social Security Social Board and the Department of Labour have been working diligently to process claims in an expeditious manner.
A statement from the Social Security Board explains that that it proposes to pay to each insured person who is laid off or unemployed, including self-employed persons, as a result of the impact of COVID-19, EC$1000 per month for a period of 3 months in the first instance.
Prime Minister Timothy Harris has described the payment fund as a $15 million dollar programme to assist workers who suffered losses in income to the tune of one thousand dollars.
The beneficiaries are expected to come from tourism, the self-employed, taxi drivers and others
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A shining example of a competently governed country. No spending like drunken sailors then having to run to the IMF who we kicked out and embarrassed to boot.
When the dust settles on Covid 19 then we will see who is the economic powerhouse of the OECS and or Caribbean. We will see who was growing at 7% and who was cooking the books.
We who were paying attention knew that ECLAC is just a rubber stamp for the ALP grand standing and the economic report was full of aborted ground faking tourism projects.
The paid choir singers like the tinman and the sidekick are curiously quiet, guess they are wiping the egg off their faces.
A…PPM – Piss Poor Management, over the last Thirty(30) years.
B…Lack of accountability, to go along with A.
C…Lack of PROSECUTION, of the perpetrators of those white collar criminals.
These are but a few, things which have this Nation stuck in the quagmire which it finds itself in, and spinning wheels.
COVID-19 is behaving like a godsend!
Brethren not to worry, a lesson from this crisis is the need for social security to provide a unemployment insurance. Think you well know this will have to be mostly employee funded hence increases in the rate. As far as what’s happening here currently to help those in need: Food vouchers are being provided to especially the vulnerable worth essentially the same 1K (750 EC). The safety net program which you enjoy, called government employment, normally reserved for those the private sector can’t use, will see cuts so that you too can fairly share the burden. As for SKN,whose so called stimulus plan includes mostly regurgitated items from their earlier announced budget, lets see how things change after their soon to be held election, when reality starts to set in (take your memory back to A&B 2009 election when we were told we were in the Luxury compartment of an express train.. and A&B was safe from seeing banks fail)
Reality has sat in, in Antigua, Barbuda & Redonda, and you are still trying to deflect, from the immediate issue, at hand(COVID-19 crisis); which has shown, that the boasting, and bragging about growth, per capita income were all grandstanding.
The issue is not what’s to come, after the fact, in terms, of putting proper policies and programs in place.
The issue is not what was done 10 or 11 years ago.
The ISSUE is COVID-19, and its ramifications, and that issue is NOW.
Now, where did all of those millions from the fastest growing Nation, in the Caribbean go to? Paying entertainers for free concerts. Paying for luxury yachts, stocked with champagne, caviar, and hoes on stilettos.
Trust me, this crisis(manufactured, or not) will last into next year. Be mindful of the “factors” which are creating The Perfect Storm for mayhem…
Guy its hard to debate the intellectually deaf:
1. Go and tell the parents whose children got the opportunity to attend the first new secondary school in ANU in decades there has been no growth.
2. Tell the parents whose children benefited from the expansion of secondary schools (PMS, AGHS, AGS, Clare hall school, etc) there has been no growth.
3. Tell the parents whose child now has the opportunity to attend University of the west indies without having to travel overseas there has been no growth.
4. Tell the areas in A&B who have benefited from Fibre optic internet there has been no growth.
5. Go and tell the persons who were able to get kidney surgery done locally there has been no growth.
6. Tell the persons who benefited from being able to have diagnostic tests done at MSJ (some 30 million invested) instead of having to go overseas there has been no growth.
7. Tell our Caribbean brethren who visit A&B to utilize the services of
the best hospital in the EC, that there has been no growth
8. Examine the betterment in infant mortality rate (5 per 1k ) this country has seen within the past 6 years, which now make us practically the same as what exists for white American children (4.67), and tell us there has been no progress. Need not tell you the situation for African Americans (10.97 per 1K)sees them not faring well when when it comes to infant mortality rate
9. The new Covid center which has cost us some 25 million ec to bring about, no other island in the EC Caribbean has been able to
do such. PAHO has labelled A&B the most prepared for COVID due to
such initiatives.
10.A&B getting the prize for the best solar PV plant in the region, clearly shows those who wish to be fair that there clearly has been
progress during these past 5 years
Last one:
Tell us the some over 400 million government has paid back in debts aiding in bringing our debt to GDP down from 104% of GDP to
now 69 percent, that there has been no progress
***Note the figure for A&B infant mortality comes from world bank and its for 2018
**Figure for US comes from Black Babies Face Double the Risk of Dying Before Their First Birthday, US news, By Gaby Galvin, Staff Writer Aug. 1, 2019, at 12:01 a.m.
Good Job to my brothers and sisters of SKB. At least you have made an effort to give back to those who gave in the first place.Antigua is getting their stimulus also.A bag of hand outs from their Constituency Representatives.Or you may go to Point FM to register to get your crumbs from the table.Shame,Shame,darn Shameful.After receiving a sum as large as over one billion dollars.They have squandered the money away like drunken sailors on shore leave.Or is the money in Global Bank Of Commerce.If the money is there.Then go and withdraw some of it like you Gaston Browne did last year to pay salaries and wages.How much of the peoples money(not yours) is in that Offshore Bank account?Why is the money in that Bank? So that it cannot be traced? If it smells like fish.It cannot be Bats.
SKB Social Security is paying out to the unemployed to the tune of $15 million. Where is our social security payments? Oh, I forgot. All of our Social Security funds were sucked out by successive Labour Governments to be used for whatever purposes they deemed fit while at the same time the government was not paying into social security for its own workers. So now, Social Security is BROKE!! Watch the next 6 months and see if pensioners get their monthly payments. Not going to happen. Mark my words. Social Security is insolvent and will become deceased very shortly. Then Gaston will come to Antiguans and tell us that he wants us to pay MORE to start a new social security scheme. That is a bet I will put my money on. We will have to pay more for our government’s GROSS NEGLIGENCE. Those who ran the Scheme into the ground in the past should be jailed!
SKB pays a gratuity tax into their social security. So when they get laid off they do not get severance from their work place, they register for unemploment. We do not pay that here, employers pay it.
Guy believes there is a Santa Claus
St Kitts, St. Lucia and Barbados have announced stimulus packages. Where is Antigua’s, the economic powerhouse of the Caribbean? What a bunch of loud mouth charlatans.
we were told of the best and brightest minds at finance. According to the PM the govenor of the central bank told him his govt saved antigua from collapsing. Yet their first budget was nearly 1 billion dollars. Collecting all that tax in a depressed economy? Earlier this year we heard our economy was growing faster than UK, Canada and USA.
They claim Harold was the worst finance minister yet UPP release every IMF report for all to see and the economic power house of the caribbean is afraid to publish one since in office.
JuJu is this really you …. wow u actually sound intelligent here ….. hope u understand it though … since we all know wenner is the author of all you nonsense
UPP did not release every single IMF report, if your check the IMF website you will note there is none (Article IV) for 2008, 2009, 2011,2013. Its always laughable hearing persons claim the government’s GDP increase figures are wrong, yet the very IMF publishes them. They are quoted in IMF’s publication (Eg IMF global perspective). It it only some IMF data you wish to see ?
You people on here are comparing a chalk and cheese situation. Antigua has been paying out it’s stimulant from since the 90s to 2020 in keeping many of you all employed when ordinarily some of you would have been on the bread line. By the way how much money ah you think these people in their individual capacity will be getting so in these countries. At the end of the day people in Antigua and Barbuda having being paid a wage or salary out to have been saving for rainy days and not just carnival fetes and costumes.
I really don’t understand how Antigua and Barbuda so bruck when everything we buy we have to pay tax, every week we work tax coming out we salary .All these politicians do is full them pocket covid-19 really bring out the lies from the Gaston administration
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