Flood relief cash grants to be reassessed – Min Mustapha tells Mahaicony residents

Agriculture Minister Zulfikar Mustapha met with farmers from the Mahaicony area at the Mortice Primary School in Mahaicony to address the concerns relating to the Government’s flood relief grants.
Subsequent to complaints made by several farmers who stated that they either received an incorrect sum of the cash grant or did not receive it at all, the Minister called a meeting with the aim of rectifying the issues.

Minister Mustapha informed the farmers that “We’ve decided that all of the areas that falls within this catchment area will have a representative to work along with the committee that was established and that they will now look at those persons who are making claims that they were assessed wrongfully or they didn’t have the right amount and based on that, within a week they will come up with a proper list, a sanitised list and we’ll do the mapping up exercise and finish off this area”.
He further stated that, “For this roll out, we started in the eastern part of the region. I was allowing the teams to work so that we can have a sanitised list of persons who should receive relief. The list came and then we began to roll out the flood relief distribution. We are now hearing a number of concerns. I am not here to dispute any of those claims. I came to put a mechanism in place. I want the farmers to elect representatives from each area to be on a special select committee along with senior officials from the Ministry and the region. These persons should be familiar with all the farmers in the area.”
He further explained that they will have to do a list for persons who were not captured and for those who did not receive the right amount. As such, upon completion of that procedure, another verification process is expected to be done to substantiate the information given by those persons on the new list.
Those persons that were present at the meeting had their names taken down, with instructions being given for officers to commence the process with the hope that it can be completed within a week’s time.