REAL NEWS – As evidence of how cash-strapped the Browne Administration is, foster parents are reporting that they are owed for 17 months now.
One couple tells REAL News that their family received their monthly stipend for four months in 2022, but has gotten nothing since – not even an explanation nor an apology – for all of 2023.
According to a foster parent, the family has been meeting all the needs of the child in their care – without the Government’s contribution.
However, she says, at her daughter’s age – the child is now a teenager – there are things she would like to have, “just like everybody else.”This complaint comes alongside laments from persons who are owed by the Social Protection Board.
A senior citizen tells REAL News that he last received a cheque in May 2023; however, he explains, that payment was for the month of January.
Accordingly, cheques for these last nine months are outstanding.
Since then, and periodically, the Board has distributed supermarket vouchers to its dependents. However, as the elderly man points out, “food vouchers can’t pay bills.”
Recently, he says, he had to trade a $50 supermarket voucher with a neighbour for a small cylinder of cooking gas, which allows him to prepare hot meals for himself.
Given the situation that he and other dependents have been facing this year, he is asking of the Browne Administration, “Whah dem do wid all the money?”
In the meantime, however, other residents are alleging that the food vouchers are being used for political patronage.
They claim they have witnessed young and able-bodied supporters of the Antigua Labour Party using them “to pay for full baskets of goods” at the supermarket.
At the same time, one resident says, “honest working people can’t manage.
We pick up things and have to put them back on the shelf, because everything is so dear and our pay is the same.”
Given their suffering and sacrifice, they all say they are deeply resentful – or “tiff tone bex,” as one woman puts it – that the Browne Administration can find the money to maintain the air-conditioning system on the Alfa Nero luxury yacht.
International media have reported that the Administration spends US$2,000 every month for generator fuel alone – in order to protect the yacht’s furnishings and floors from mold.
However, locally, poor families say they are unable to run their cooling fans for too long in the current heat, because of high electricity bills.
“We are a forgotten people!” the Rural East resident concludes sadly.
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