Welfare grants not for working people

Persons with disabilities were reminded recently that they should not be receiving a grant from the Welfare Department if they are employed.

Kim Bob-Waithe of the Welfare Department issued the reminder as the National Disabilities Unit (NDU) held a Community Outreach Workshop for persons with disabilities, at the Valley Resource Centre in St. George recently.

“As long as you are working, you are contributing to the NIS (National Insurance Scheme), and as long as you are paying into the NIS, you can’t have the Government’s benefits as it relates to it,” she said during a question and answer segment she facilitated during her presentation.

“We know persons will work from time to time. We say to them, as long as you start work, please inform us so we can stop it at our end...we rely on the honesty of the individual to call us and say I have found a job, can you stop the benefit. And once that relationship is established, once the person comes off from that job for any reason at all, they contact the office and the officer just does all the paperwork and we give back the grant for another period of time,” Bob-Waithe explained.

However, after it was noted from the audience that some disabled persons who do work garner very little wages in the process and would need to supplement their income somehow, Bob-Waithe suggested that there are other ways besides the grant to deal with the matter.

“If you are working and the income is small, there are other services that we do offer that can rule out that. For example, a person can be working…for $100, $250 a week, but they still have the light bill to pay, the water bill to pay, they need food. We are aware that persons are going to still engage the services of stores in order to get their personal needs met – whether it is clothing, whether it is furnishings, whatever – to be able to make their living better. You sit down and discuss that with the officer. Based on your wages, you present all of your bills and look at that," she explained.

"Whereby you may not be able to get a grant because you are getting money, there a couple of things that can be done, whether it’s (us) paying the light bill or the water bill, that frees up money for you to be able to contribute to the other things that you have. So there are other services that can be looked at to balance that without a grant,” Bob-Waithe told those gathered.
(RSM)