Make social assistance short-term

Social development over the past years has eaten away at the fabric of TT with no real results. Every government, every Budget, every minister of finance for decades have used social development to the detriment of national development.

When it’s not hamper and pamper giveaways, it’s baby grant and food stamp — and you can count on one hand the number of people who step away from these programmes voluntarily.

Most beneficiaries of social programmes receive more than one benefit, sometimes with an accumulative value higher than some gainfully employed people.

Indeed, there would always be the less fortunate among us but we have finally reached rock bottom where squandermania could find no place to hide. Two lines for social development and hooray, not a dog bark. Fourteen thousand “ghost” card holders removed from the system. Dig deeper Madam Minister, I am sure you would find hundreds more. Good work Minister of Social Development.

What about those who could to be weaned off the system? Please wean them off. They must move to become self-sufficient.

Madam Minister, I implore you to revise your means test. How many card holders use Government public transport to save a dollar? How many card holders’ immediate household members shop online? Or are in the Play Whe booth four times a day? They must eat according to their means (no insult intended). Leave chicken and chips and pizza for special occasions like long ago.

I believe social assistance, the necessary evil that it is, should be primarily for the mentally or physically challenged who need it or for short-term relief. I wonder if recipients’ faces were to be published before receiving social assistance how many would apply?

A DAVIDSON Morvant