MINISTER of Social Services and Urban Development Obie Wilchcombe. (File photo)
By LETRE SWEETING
lsweeting@tribunemedia.net
SOCIAL Services Minister Obie Wilchcombe announced Friday that the RISE programme will be formally launched next month to further strengthen the ministry’s social assistance programme that has a budget of $21m.
Mr Wilchcombe said the social safety net benefits the assistance programme that has been successfully supporting residents with resources amounting from about $15,000 to $21,000 a month, since the 10 percent increase of the budget last month.
“(It’s been) doing pretty good,” he told reporters following a donation to his ministry by the Cynthia Mother Pratt Foundation. “It started last month. We'll continue its 10 percent across the board, for all the systems, whether it's food and shelter, whether it's health, whether it's a burial, we provide assistance across the board. It's going well, but more is still needed.
“I think we were budgeted $21m for the year. So on average, how much you get, I guess you say it fluctuates. But on average, what's spent was about $15,000. Sometimes it was $21,000. It all depends. For some months, interestingly, more people are in need and some months, they’re not,” he said.
Mr Wilchcombe said the RISE programme’s assistance to clients each month is also aiming to include job search assistance in an effort to help more Bahamians become independent.
“What the RISE programme does is it incorporates,” he said. “How do we take you from being dependent to become an independent? The programme looks at how do we cause the children to want to be more in school and to benefit more from their education?”
He added: “How do we cause children to understand the importance of health care, and also very important is the programme that we're instituting now is ensuring that when people come in for assistance, we register them. We then plan to find job assistance. We then want to put them in a place where they're able to work,” he said.
Mr Wilchcombe first announced the plan in July to increase the rates of financial assistance given through the community support services division by 10 percent of the Department of Social Services effective this month.
This increase was made in response to the increasing financial challenges faced by Bahamians across the country due to increased prices, an insufficient minimum wage and inflation.
