$2.4M allocated to help the most vulnerable in 2023
Minister for Health & Social Development, Marlon Penn has revealed that some $2.4 million has been allocated in the 2023 budget to address some of the critical socio-economic challenges residents are facing territory-wide.
He said an aggressive public relations and outreach campaign will be launched next year to gather information that can help the government properly assess people’s needs.
This is to ensure assistance goes to those most in need.
“Many times persons who really need the support don’t come to the departments to apply for that support. And I have told the head of the Social Development Department that we need to be more aggressive in our outreach to our vulnerable population,” Penn explained.
“So we expect to get that done early 2023. You can expect an aggressive public relations campaign being launched to get to those vulnerable persons within our society,” Penn said.
The Health Ministry has receive the largest share of the recurrent allocations in the 2023 budget, with some $73.07 million or 18.3 per cent allocated for spending next year.
In giving an update on the overall operations of his ministry, Penn said teams have been severely challenged in the last five years because of major disasters that impacted the territory and which required the Ministry of Health & Social Development to lead the response.
He added that responding to the community’s socio-economic needs and providing health services is a huge undertaking that has to be done in partnership with the private sector and non-governmental organisations.
To that end, Penn said he has been focused on rebuilding relationships in these sectors to better address the needs of the community.
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Only Marlon knows
What about the people of Palm Grove Shopping Center who lost income since 2017?five budgets has passed since then with no reference to the people of Palm Grove Shopping Center.
I think it is a little backward allocating the money before the need is known. Be that as it may this is a good thing.
We must get better at this. Set some verifiable criteria. If this is going to be distributed on sad stories it will not be fair and equitable which is how government money should be spent. Are we talking about help with housing, food, medical?
@ ISLM……. The last elected VIP government put out a design and build tender for the Palm Grove Centre.
Tenders were received, opened and that’s the last that was heard of that. No report on who bid or the tender prices. Maybe the tender didn’t go the way “they” wanted it to go.
Palm Grove rebuild…..maybe in the next 10yrs if your lucky.