Agency for Social Protection |26 May 2017

Welfare assistance: first quarter financial assessment

In his address to the Nation in February 2017, President Danny Faure stated that “It is social and economic conditions that are not addressed on time and in systematic fashion that brings a fraction of our population to live in a state that we call poverty.  This is a fact.  It is reality.  We have programmes and tools available to us today to reverse these social and economic conditions.  Programmes reflecting a social protection system based on four pillars – universal primary health care, universal education, an agency for social protection, and a universal pension. From the moment a child is born, we have information on the child and his or her parents.  When the child is at school, we have information on the child and the parents through the school.  We have a primary health care system which is based on close interactions with the population.  The Home Care system allows us to interact directly with the elderly population.  The Agency for Social Protection provides us with information on the sector of the population that they are assisting. In summary, we have a system which covers all categories of people.  What we need to do now is to co-ordinate our actions to ensure that our policies and strategies are coherent, and this is why we have a Secretary of State, Dick Esparon, who has the specific task of doing this co-ordination; of putting in place a plan and programme targeting the families, with an aim of eliminating poverty and ensuring that none of our citizens are left behind.  Government will provide the necessary resources to accomplish this mission.”

Recently, we have seen workshops and talks organised to better educate our people on how to manage our budgets and slowly take responsibility of their own lives. Marcus Simeon, chief executive of the Agency for Social Protection (ASP) brings some light on how his agency has been functioning during the first quarter of the year and how part of the budgeted money for this year, SR1.04 billion, has been spent on the state funded social programmes.

Brief on ASP’s Stats for the 1^st quarter of 2017

ASP’s 2017 approved budget covering all totals to SR1.04bln. This budget caters for 24 programmes in total, greatest share of this budget (59%) is allocated to the state funded retirement benefit at SR584.22m and in total 4 lines items makes up 89% of the overall;

Home Care Scheme

Over the first quarter we have seen a noticeable increase in spending under the home carer scheme which is bound to get even higher with our ageing population, under the current model this means increase spending.

We have though embarked on reforming the programme starting with professionalising the domiciliary care givers themselves in a bid to improve service standards to one that can really complement that being offered directly my MoH. This will be followed by structural reforms in a bid to improve monitoring and make more efficient use of available resources.

We used August figures as the baseline when finalising the 2017 budget, back then there was 3,021 care givers and as at April  this year this figure had gone up to 3,183; a 5% increase in a less than one year period. Similarly in August’16 monthly payments under the scheme came to SR15.95m to fund and now this figure as increased by SR1m to 16.91m.

Retirement Benefit

As expected with the ageing population we will see a steady increase in spending under this benefit from SR48.73m in January to SR49.85 in May, as the number of pensioners rose from 9,650 to 9,871 respectively. Note this benefit caters for a baseline pension of SR5,050 for all resident Seychellois citizens upon reaching the legal retirement age in line with the Social Security Benefit Act.

Invalidity/Disability Benefit

Though not at the same level as the two previously mentioned spending has increased from SR9.65 covering 1,911 individuals to SR10.68m covering 2,114 individuals. This benefit provides an assistance of SR5,050 to;

1) An individual who was in employment and has had to stop due to long-term illness/injury or due to disability

2) A child born with or develop a disability during childhood.

In both cases to qualification for assistance is certify by the Agency’s Medical Board comprising of medical professionals who meets to review cases once every month.

Welfare Assistance

Welfare assistance is the 4^th highest budget line item under social programmes administered by ASP. Monthly assistance provided is means tested based on the household income compared against a set of measures.

The combined income of a household is compared to a set of five standard measures as detailed in the accompanying table:

From the above you can see that assistance is not for an individual but rather for his or her household and it doesn’t cater for every spending that is made nor to their fullest amount but rather caters for a very basic amount.

Example

A single mother of two children in school earning a wage of SR6,000.00 monthly (net of income tax/pension fund contribution), the father of her children are not supporting her even after going through the Family tribunal. She is repaying a housing loan at SR1,500 monthly as well as other general purpose loans at SR1,200.00.

Based on the table above her combine household weights/measures will come to:  

This compared with her household income of SR6,000 yields a deficit of SR923 which her household will be assisted with normally for a one year period.

ASP breaks down welfare assistance into two main category based on the status of the main applicant representing the household.

1) Insufficiency: Those like the lady in our example above whereby the household representative is in employment.

2) Unemployment: Those whereby the household representative is not in employment.

Over the 5 months from January to May we have seen an increase of 18% in the number of assistance granted on grounds of unemployment from 648 to 764 households, while we have seen a fall of 11% on assistance on grounds of insufficiency from 1,180 to 1,048 households.

Overall we have seen a fall of 14% fall in assistance granted monthly from SR4.82m in January to SR4.14m in May. The main reason for this being increased income from employment mainly due to revision in Income tax regulations. ASP is conscious though that there are a number of families that for one reason or another finds themselves in a difficult situation financially month on month but who unfortunately does not qualify for assistance based on the above, notably due to high housing related cost, unsustainable debt repayment, non-contributing household members principally due to substance abuse and non-contributing absent fathers, to name but a few.

With this in mind we are working with our partners to see how better assist struggling families while trying not to promote dependency ensuring that everyone makes more responsible decision and becomes more accountable for their actions.

He noted that the above gave more clarity on the first quarter of the year. In all we are aiming for more conditionality on welfare assistance; the rest are statutory benefits eg: retirement benefit that you are either 63+ and qualify irrespective of anything else. Welfare assistance is discretionary nothing should be for free anymore.

Contributed