Self Help: No preferential treatment in awarding grants

NATIONAL Commission for Self Help chairman Adrian Winters told Parliament's Public Accounts (Enterprise) Committee (PAEC) on Wednesday that the commission displays no bias in awarding funding to those in need, replying to concerns raised by Mayaro MP Rushton Paray.

While senior project officer Gary Romain said the commission had just begun a drive to tell applicants if they had been approved, Paray alleged there had been no response to more than 400 applications his office had helped constituents with. These included 13 fire victims for 2016-2022, plus 43 residents hit by storm winds last year, he lamented.

Paray said his office had assisted his 404 constituents to lodge applications for self-help assistance over the past 12-18 months.

"We have had no responses."

Paray said these requests were for routine things such as home extensions and repairs, plus emergencies such as fires and landslips.

He recalled the claimants hit by high winds in 2021.

"Forty-three went to the Disaster Management Unit, and my understanding is that 25 of them fitted the criteria. That is September 2021. Up to this day, as far as our records indicate, and communications with those 25 persons, no grants have been forthcoming.

"I want to be very careful with what I am going to say here, without putting myself in any trouble. There is the perception out there that there is preferential treatment – and I want to use that word very, very nicely – in terms of which areas get served."

He wondered how these Mayaro claimants felt about the commission distributing $3 million in help to people in other areas, just four days after high winds had hit Mayaro.

"We are over one year. How can you rationally tell the people of Mayaro to wait a bit longer?"

Winters replied, "What our records reflect is that we conducted about 54 site visits. As of July of this year, 35 of those which were on the list submitted to us for an update were not even registered on our database.

"We may have given the application forms to the clients but they would not have fulfilled their end of the bargain in terms of bringing in those applications."

Paray interjected, "Mr Winter, I want to respectfully tell you that our office is very meticulous with those forms. Even so, if I give you the benefit of the doubt that the applications were not done or it was done incorrectly, (but) it is still over one year."

Paray doubted that applicants in other constituencies were any more efficient than those in Mayaro, as helped along by the MP and his office.

"From July 2021, we are in November 2022, and I cannot believe and I will not accept that not one out of those 25 applications could be processed. I doubt very much that (even) one out of those 25 applications has not been correctly done to get that grant."

He said Mayaro residents were hurting.

Winter replied, "I just want to assure this committee and the public that there is no preferential treatment when it comes to the distribution of our services."

He said the commission tries to ensure help is spread across the country. Winters said 404 claims, each estimated at a maximum level of grant, could amount to $6 million in total value, out of the commission's $21 million budget nationwide.

"I would have looked at the details as far back as 2010, to 2022, and I've not seen any data to suggest there is any preferential treatment in the distribution of grants."

PAEC member Keith Scotland asked if the criteria for awarding help needed to be changed.

Winters replied, "We have had instances in the past where persons would have been afforded grants and landlords just came afterwards and put them out of the property. We look at that as taxpayers' dollars down the drain."

Paray said many applicants had problems showing any land title or tenancy, given that many homes relied on deeds of gift, such as from a grandfather,

He asked the commission to consider reverting to its pre-2016 practice of accepting a sworn affidavit, on pain of perjury charges, that someone had been living on a property for, say, 20 years.