SXMElections.com

~ Wants it restored ~

PHILIPSBURG--Sixty-year-old grandmother Mary Bartlette Weekes, who says she is a poor and ill woman, does not know how she will continue to survive since authorities slashed her financial assistance from NAf. 734 to NAf. 186.

According to a well-placed source at the Social Services Department, the circumstances surrounding the decrease in her aid were explained to Weekes, as well as the fact that she would now be receiving pension benefits and there was now income of others working in the household, “so it would only be a fair calculation that her aid should decrease.”

Weekes said she had been receiving NAf. 734 in financial aid from August 2014 to July 2015. She said she had been granted the aid because she was poor and unable to work because of a medical condition. Shortly after she was approved for the aid, the home in which she had been living and one occupied by one of her children on Apricot Road/Marigot Hill Road were completely destroyed by fire on August 2, 2014. She lost everything in the blaze.

Weekes said that although the family had received little assistance from the public they still have to completely rebuild their lives and re-accumulate all the things they lost in the fire. She provided this newspaper with reports of the fire that destroyed their homes.

Weekes said that when she had reapplied for her financial assistance she had been informed via letter that she would be receiving only NAf. 186 from August 2015 to July 2016 – a reduction of NAf. 548.

Weekes said she could not understand how the assistance had been cut, given that her situation is now worse than it had been before she was approved for the higher amount. She said that since the fire destroyed her home and that of one of her children, she, her children and their children had decided to rent a home together to see how they could make ends meet. However, she said the prices of house rent were exorbitant.

The families did manage to squeeze into a two-bedroom apartment in St. Peters as they try to piece their lives back together before they are stable enough to go their separate ways again. Weekes said her two children who live with her with their own children and families earn minimum wage, which was barely enough to take care of themselves much less help her. She said her daughter alone had three children to take care of and her son had his child and partner to care for.

Weekes said she was at a loss as to what to do with the NAf. 186 the Department of Social Services had approved for her. Even though many persons told her not to accept it, she said she had no choice but to take the first month’s aid because she needed the money. She said she had gone in to the Department of Labour and Social Services to enquire why her aid had been cut and had been told that she needed to “help” herself.

Weekes said she did not know how to help herself at her age. She said she used to do babysitting, cleaning and taking care of children in a playschool to take care of herself years ago, but she had stopped after she became afflicted with a heart problem and was unable to perform certain work. She said she had provided correspondence from her doctor to Social Services to this effect.

She said when she had been lying down not knowing what to do next, God had urged her to tell her story to the public via the media. Weekes said she and God wanted to know how the Department of Labour and Social Services knew that the family had gotten back everything they had lost in the fire and how the Department knew they could help each other financially, “because we can’t help each other financially,” she stressed.

Weekes wants the Department to give her the amount of aid she had been receiving from August 2015 to July 2015. She said this was what God wanted to see happen “or He will step in on the Department.” She said she had been receiving aid from Government for roughly 10 years.

The source at the Social Services Department said Government had clear-cut ordinances that regulated what could and could not be granted to a prospective recipient or one already receiving aid. Therefore, all cases and applications are re-assessed on an annual basis, as circumstances may have changed from the previous year.

The Minister responsible introduced an indexation of the aid in 2014. This automatically increased the existing aid of most recipients based on the make-up of their households. However, once renewing, all factors are taken into consideration.

When Weekes renewed her application for aid, she had to indicate all that had changed, which would be several factors influencing her income, to include possible pension benefits, additional household income of adults who might be children living in the same home with her – the wealth of the household, the source said.

The source added that there were specific calculations, along with a specialised system that generates the figure when all categories, income and mutations are added. The source also dismissed Weekes’ assertions that she had been told that she needed to “help” herself when she asked why her aid had been reduced.

The source confirmed that Social Services had been assisting Weekes for several years. The source said Weekes had received “a considerable amount” of help from the material department in the form of financial assistance during the course of last year, as well as counselling, work sessions, furniture, food supplies, clothing and other tangible items, after losing everything in the fire, although Weekes later claimed that she had been left in the cold to fend for herself.