Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

From June 1, the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices will have a re­vised el­i­gi­bil­i­ty Stan­dard Means test al­low­ing more low-in­come and vul­ner­a­ble per­sons to qual­i­fy for State sup­port. This in­cludes house­holds af­fect­ed by the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the Com­mu­ni­ty En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP).

Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry Na­tal­ie Chai­tan-Ma­haraj gave the in­for­ma­tion in the Sen­ate yes­ter­day, fol­low­ing queries from In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­lene Attzs on whether there has been any in­crease in ap­pli­ca­tions for so­cial as­sis­tance, food sup­port or oth­er wel­fare pro­grammes since CEPEP’s clo­sure/re­struc­tur­ing.