What’s the Future of the Food Assistance Program?

Dolores Balderamos-Garcia

The fate of the food assistance program inherited by the Briceño administration beyond the current fiscal year remains uncertain.  Monies have been set aside to continue with the initiative until the end of March.  However, allocations for the program in the coming financial year remain doubtful since the government finds itself in a disastrous financial predicament. The public purse is virtually empty, and that’s the state in which the new administration says they found it when they took over in November of last year. According to Minister of Human Development Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, blame for the excessive spending of public funds lies squarely at the previous government’s feet.

Dolores Balderamos-Garcia, Minister of Human Development

“Of course it is something we will have to review but I can’t speak for what will happen in the new fiscal year.  Of course we want to continue helping our people and we must continue to help the poorest of the poor, however, I do want to say that perhaps enough emphasis has not been placed before on the dire straits that the UDP government left this program in before we took over.  They pretty much dried out the entire budget with wild spending, cronyism, corruption, you name it and I shouldn’t be here today having to remind you of that but it seems that it is so necessary because it seems to me that they have the face of brass now to be talking about X amount of persons were getting and now it’s been cut down.  Well, you can’t spend what you don’t have and if they are having the audacity now to talk to us about this program and oh you know, in the past the people were getting X amount and now it’s not the case.  I will have to put the blame squarely where it belongs.  The previous government because of their corruption and because of their wild spending before November eleventh left us in the situation that we are in.  But I assure you, let me not say that we are backing down from any difficult question or anything, I assure you that we will continue the program up until the end of March and we are looking very closely at how we are going to continue it.”