Income support for Beryl victims begins in November

Vincentians whose livelihoods have been impacted by the passage of Hurricane Beryl on July 1 will begin receiving income support from the government in November, Minister of Finance Camillo Gonsalves has told Parliament.

“… the income support grant, employee and small business relief grant for the period September to December 2024 is $600 per month per household,” he said.


The minister said the November payout will be for October and November. “… and then you’ll get the payment in December when December comes. And that is $600 a month.”

Gonsalves said that the household relief grant of income support to persons who have been unemployed by virtue of Beryl is also $600 a month.

“And in the Southern Grenadines and Northern Grenadines, the unemployed household relief grant will cover 492 households.”

He said there are additional from Social Development, adding that this assistance of EC$600 a month is for fishers and farmers.

“… and the assistance to people who have been displaced from the hospitality sector will also be $600 a month.”

Gonsalves said there was a registration process in addition to that done by the Ministry of Mobilisation as the Ministry of Agriculture has done a separate evaluation and registration for farmers.

“And they have ascertained that just over 4,000 farmers and farm workers nationally have been impacted. And they will receive the $600 a month.”

Gonsalves said the evaluation of fishers and crew on fishing vessels was still ongoing and the anticipation was that the number would be somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 fishers and crew.

“In addition, fishers and crew will benefit from the $2 million in the supplementary budget for boats and engines. The constraint at the moment is the supply chain to get as many engines as is required by the number of people who have been impacted,” he said.

“And at this particular point, I can only commit that we’ll try to have those engines and boats, particularly the engines, in place before the end of the year, because there are logistical constraints and the challenges with giving him in dribs and drabs, because if you just bring in five and Harry and Johnny and Joe get, the question is then ‘Why did Harry and Johnny and Joe get and not Frankie and Sue?’ So that work is ongoing?”

The finance minister said there is a third list of people who work in the hospitality sector, who will also receive EC$600 a month.

“Now these lists have been prepared by the respective ministries with responsibility for these components. The Ministry of Mobilisation has now aggregated all of these lists, the list that they did, the list of the farmers, the list of the hospitality workers.

“And what they are doing now is overlaying those lists to make sure that people haven’t double- and triple-dipped; because you don’t want somebody getting $600 from Mobilisation, $600 from Agriculture and $600 from Tourism for the same time period.”

He said the payment has been deferred to November “so that we can filter out people who may have registered in multiple places.

“Because the idea is that you get $600 a month. You don’t get 600 from each pot.”

On July 19, Parliament approved with bipartisan support EC$136.4 million in supplementary estimates in response to Hurricane Beryl, which left six people dead and hundreds of millions of dollars in damage when it made landfall in the Grenadines on July 1.

The supplementary budget includes EC$12 million in income support to fishers and farmers.

Meanwhile, Gonsalves noted that the supplementary budget also included EC$500,000 for the Promoting Youth Micro Enterprises (PRYME) Programme.

“That money would be insufficient for the 488 people who have applied for PRYME from the Grenadines,” he said, adding that the government was doing the analysis to identify those who are most needy, vulnerable and most likely to get back on their feet in their businesses as quickly as possible.  

“You don’t want to order a deep freeze for somebody tomorrow, and they don’t have electricity yet,” the finance minister said.

“You want to make sure that you have these things working in tandem with the other relief efforts,” Gonsalves said.

“But we may also have to, I believe, supplement the primary allocation for the Grenadines given the popularity of the programme and the applications received,” he told lawmakers.