Hiccups with G.O.B.’s Unemployment Relief Programme

The pandemic has pushed employment numbers up and a full economic recovery will take time to occur. Most businesses project two years to be able to recover.  Eighty-three thousand persons applied for the Unemployment Relief Programme and forty-five thousand have been approved. The programme is floundering because applicants continue to fill out forms with inaccurate information.  Of the seventy-five million dollars borrowed from Central Bank, less than fifteen percent has been disbursed and from the look of things, the issue can be compounded by additional layoffs.

Dean Barrow

Prime Minister Dean Barrow

“We are having some difficulties with the unemployment relief programme as I alluded to earlier, having principally to do with the lack of information or accurate information submitted by some participants or would-be participants in the programme.  But we’ve only spent as a consequence something like eleven million dollars, I believe, to date.  Remember that we borrowed seventy-five million dollars to fund the unemployment relief programme.  I did take ten from that seventy-five to start the food rollout, but that is going to be reimbursed, so we still must think in terms of a seventy-five million dollar pool for unemployment relief.  On that basis, absolutely with the additional layoffs that we will see now the unemployment relief programme will have to continue and perhaps be expanded.”