The Government’s CARE Programme has received over 500,000 applications across the available grant types. Given the disproportionately high number of applications for the Compassionate Grant (over 400,000), processing and payment of these has taken precedence.
Given the unprecedented size and scope of this social intervention programme, and the speed with which it has been designed and implemented and my desire for transparency nonetheless, I wrote to the Auditor General and invited her to independently review the application and disbursement processes of the CARE Programme. The Speaker tabled the first report on the application system last Tuesday. Processing of Compassionate Grant
payments only began after this report became available to the administrators of the CARE Programme.
The CARE Programme started making Compassionate Grant transfers to financial institutions during the middle of last week and these have been available to applicants from last Thursday May 7th.
Compassionate Grants
Many persons selected to receive their Compassionate Grant from remittance companies.
Table 1: Compassionate Grant Applications by type of Financial Institution
| Commercial Banks | 210,267 |
| Remittance Entities | 162,024 |
| Credit Unions/ Building Societies | 29,023 |
| Total | 401,314 |
Of this number 378,919 were deemed eligible and 22,395 or 6% have been determined to be ineligible due to the fact that they are on a recent payroll.
So far approximately J$2.65 billion in Compassionate Grant payments, for some 265,000 applicants, or 70% of those eligible, has been made to the financial institutions selected by applicants. The remainder are being processed including for validation of banking information.
Collection of Compassionate Grants – Banks
Applicants who have received a text message confirming eligibility and whose bank accounts have been verified can expect the funds to be sent directly to their bank account.