Unemployment is Slow to Come By

Help is slow to come for thousands of Belizeans who continue to wait for unemployment assistance through the Government of Belize. More eight thousand persons applied but the process has proven to be tedious; one that sees a number of checks and balances, as well as errors being recorded during the application process.  Earlier this week, we reported that onlly thirty-one thousand have been approved thus far.  Prime Minister Barrow explained the delay.

Dean Barrow

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“A little bit of a lag is to be expected, there is the approval and then the approved list is sent to the [Ministry of] Finance and then the [Ministry of] then has see what the quantum is that’s required to pay those on the approved list and then Finance sends the money across to S.S.B. and S.S.B. then, where they are able to, deposits the money in the accounts.  So in the normal course of that sort of a process there will be some little lag.  But in addition to that, people make mistakes, the banks often send back to say no, there is no such account number or the names that you’ve given us and asked us to credit monies to that person; that name, we have somebody with a similar name but it’s not spelt in the same way.  So there are those sorts of issues that crop up that would then mean that the committee has to go back and get in touch with the person whose account is not able to be credited either because there’s not an account, he’s given the wrong number or because he spelt some name wrongly, or some particular is inaccurate.”