PNP proposes COVID-19 reprieve
Published:Thursday | March 19, 2020 | 12:00 AMEdmond Campbell/Senior Staff Reporter
The Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) wants the Government to provide a moratorium on payroll statutory contributions during the COVID-19 crisis and a mitigation grant of $50,000 per family under the Programme for the Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH).
“This will assist businesses to keep people employed, and this will be an additional measure to go along with the two that the minister (of finance) mentioned yesterday (Tuesday),” said Mark Golding, the opposition spokesman on finance.
The PATH benefits could be distributed over a two- to three-month period.
Golding and other spokespersons from the PNP were addressing journalists yesterday via video conference in keeping with stipulations for social distancing in the wake of the COVID-19 spread. Fifteen people have been confirmed as having novel coronavirus infections here. The country recorded its first related death yesterday.
The PATH allocation, said Golding, would put cash in the hands of those who need it most and would benefit 100,000 families or a total of 300,000 people.
Golding said that these measures would help to buttress the society against the pressure of the severe economic downturn that was now unfolding.
On Tuesday, Finance and the Public Service Minister Dr Nigel Clarke announced a Business Employee Support and Transfer Cash programme, which would provide temporary cash transfers to businesses in targeted sectors based on the number of workers they keep employed.
He also highlighted the Supporting of Employees with Transfer of Cash programme, which would provide temporary cash transfer to individuals where it can be verified that they lost their employment since March 10 owing to the covid-19 crisis.
The PNP spokesman on finance has also recommended that the Government pump an additional $5 million into the Constituency Development Fund to boost the welfare allocation for the period of the COVID-19 crisis.
He said the amount could be disbursed by the Social Development Fund to address cases of severe hardships identified by the political representatives on the ground.
Opposition Spokesman on Health Dr Morais Guy is pushing the administration to source adequate protective gear for medical practitioners and other health workers who are on the front line of the COVID-19 battle. He urged that sufficient supplies of gloves, suits, and face masks be made available.
Guy said that with a shortage of doctors and nurses in the public-health sector, the country could not afford to have its health workers in quarantine, reducing Jamaica’s capacity to fight the virus.
“If you do not adequately protect your doctors and nurses, you run the risk that at the height of the infection, you may not have sufficient persons manning the hospitals and health centres and all the isolation and quarantine areas,” he stressed.