Food cards cost $2B over ten-year period

The Government has spent close to $2 billion on the Targeted Conditional Cash Transfer Programme (TCCTP), best known as the “TT Food Card”, between fiscal 2006 and 2016, says Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Social Development and Family Affairs Jacinta Bailey-Sobers.

Answering questions yesterday at the Joint Select Committee inquiring into social services and public administration at the Parliament, Bailey said the sum was for the social programme only and not administrative costs.

The expenditure for fiscal 2016 was $260 million for some 30,000 recipients. A total of 27,000 beneficiaries are recipients of cards, while another 4,000 have been receiving payment by cheque since the biometric system was put on hold.

Concern was expressed about the payment by cheques on a targeted programme, as purchases were not monitored. Beneficiaries are not allowed to buy alcohol and cigarettes with the grant for the purchase of food.

However, Bailey-Sobers said, the payment by cheques was a temporary measure to accommodate recipients who had qualified for the food cards since 2014.

Speaking about the biometric system of administering the food card programme, she said it was costing Government about $2.8 million a year to provide $1.7 million worth of cards to 3,100 beneficiaries. “That wasn’t making economic sense,” she said.

With the biometric system no longer in place to screen new applicants, she said, it will save Government about $110 million annually.

With a hold on the biometric system, she said, “I am satisfied, because it is costing just about $1 million a year for the bank charges, and because we will also be continuing the biometric registration, because that system still belongs to the ministry, so the investment would not have been lost.” The ministry is introducing a debit-card system of payment through First Citizens Bank for the TCCTP in December and January.

The cost of the biometric system was more, she said.

Chief Technical Officer Vijay Gangapersad said capital expenditure on the biometric system was $30.9 million, capital expenditure on the financial platform development $3.8 million, recurrent expenditure for the biometric platform $2.8 million, and the financial platform, which included SMS, text messaging module and bank charges, was $29 million annually. The use of the biometric system was approved in 2005, but attempts to implement it over the years were not successful until 2015, when it was introduced.

The new system, she said, “would be costing us $1 million a year.”