The Tribune

By LETRE SWEETING

FREE National Movement leader Michael Pintard wants a “proper assessment” of who in the country is still “food insecure” and needs the aid of social assistance programmes.

Previously, Prime Minister Phillip Davis said that as the economy opened the Bahamian people would have less need of the social assistance programmes.

Mr Pintard said the Ministry of Social Services and Urban Development should take another look at the amount of funds that are being provided to assist Bahamian families.

“For those of us that manage constituencies who are still very much active in the community, we know that many families are struggling in terms of food security,” he said.

Mr Pintard added that though he believes social workers are doing their best to address the problems in the provisional systems, the unspoken stipulation that households with government workers are not qualified for certain assistance should be reviewed.

“One of the issues that exist in many of our communities is that sometimes you have a household of five. If you are in Abaco or Grand Bahama, that household could be larger, because there are multiple families living under the same roof, because they can’t afford accommodations,” he said.

“One member may be a reserved police officer and there seems to be a policy that is applied that if you have a government worker in the house that you don’t qualify for certain types of assistance, but when the presence of the government worker is a temporary arrangement, there definitely needs to be a deeper dive.”

Mr Pintard followed these concerns by adding that The Bahamas is under-resourced in the area of social services and in meeting the needs of Bahamians.

“I believe that social workers are doing their best to address the problems that we have. But we need additional assistance in terms of additional social workers who are trained and in terms of intervening in these situations and detecting these social challenges that we have,” he said.

In March, COVID-19 feeding data shared with the government from the World Bank revealed the COVID-19 National Food Distribution Task Force distributed 1.447 million food parcels and vouchers to needy Bahamians at the height of the pandemic.

Susan Larson, who ran the National Food Distribution Task Force created by the former Minnis administration, disclosed the detailed records covering the criteria it used to identify the 14,427 households that became the primary focus for the $53m, 70-week initiative.