PORK POT SAFE - Senior glad after receiving COVID compassionate grant
Published:Tuesday | May 12, 2020 | 12:19 AMAndre Williams/Staff Reporter
Sixty-three-year-old Claudette Biggs of Board Villa in Kingston was all smiles yesterday and it wasn’t because of how she spent Mother’s Day on Sunday with family and a scrumptious meal prepared by her granddaughter.
Her joy, she told The Gleaner, was fuelled by the compassionate grant she collected on Saturday, which allowed her to put on her own pork pot yesterday.
The Government began paying out funds under its COVID-19 Allocation of Resources for Employees (CARE) programme late last week. The compassionate grant provided a one-time payment of $10,000 to beneficiaries.
“Mi just done cook mi pork and mi rice and peas ‘cause I didn’t get to cook yesterday (Sunday) because I went to my granddaughter for Mother’s Day dinner,” Biggs told The Gleaner.
Pointing out that she noticed that some beneficiaries were drinking, saying the Government gave them “free money”, Biggs said that she would not squander her grant.
“Mi nuh deh pon dat. Early Saturday morning, a right up a Pavilion mi go. Mi go early and the lines still long. Mi reach something to 7 and it open 7 o’clock,” she said, adding, “Mi get through before 8 o’clock.”
She then headed to the supermarket to get groceries.
“Mi buy tripe and mi buy mi groceries, snacks, juice. Right now, mi fridge have whole heap of juice. It stretch good – mi toilet tissue, bath soap, toothpaste, household items,” she said.
Although the money will run out, she was happy that, for once, she was the recipient of a government grant.
“Mi glad fi it because mi never give dem nothing fi put down, and if a me alone, mi wouldn’t get nothing ‘cause mi can’t tek the crowd,” Biggs said, smiling ear to ear, explaining that her granddaughter assisted her with the application. “Mi never get nothing from Government yet. This a the first.”
Keron Smith, who operates a cookshop, said he was notified via a text message that his disbursement was ready, but after two failed attempts, he will try again on the third and final day he was given to collect it.
“I get the text. I am to collect May 8 or 10 or 18. Mi get up from ‘bout 6:30 yesterday and head to the Western Union. Though it open 8:30 at Heroes Circle, … the way the line long, mi say mi a go Cross Roads,” he said. “Reach up there and see the line, mi say, ‘No, mi a go Pavilion’. It don’t even look like line. You know when people a war and crowd bundle up, so it look.”
With the hours within which he could operate his cookshop slipping away, he decided against trying any further as he needed to wrap up his cookshop operation before the daily curfew kicked in.
“A lady say a di right ting dat, but mi fi memba say a the 18th a my last chance. So Monday morning early, mi a get up by 5:30,” Smith, who plans to invest the money in his enterprise, told The Gleaner.
Yesterday, Finance and Public Service Minister Dr Nigel Clarke said that approximately $2.65 billion in compassionate grant payments for some 265,000 applicants has been made to the financial institutions selected by applicants. In a Twitter post, he added that some 77,000 applicants had entered bank information which has not been validated.