Tyrone Reid, Enterprise Reporter

The latest issue of the Jamaica Survey of Living Conditions (JSLC) says there is improved targeting of the needy under the Programme for Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) in comparison to previous programmes of a similar nature. However, the study noted that there is still room for much improvement.

"The programme was very progressive, with 79.4 per cent of beneficiaries being in the poorest two quintiles.

"In spite of this, a large percentage of beneficiaries were not poor (i.e. did not have consumption levels below the poverty line), thus the programme reached only 17.3 per cent of the poor," the study revealed.

The practice of economically better-off people benefiting from funds that were intended for the poor plagued the programmes that pre-dated PATH.

Statistics contained in the 1994 edition of the JSLC showed that all the vouchers that were issued under the now defunct Food Stamp Programme did not go to the poor.

The 1994 publication revealed that the two poorest categories (Quintiles 1 and 2) accounted for approximately 39 per cent and exactly 23 per cent, respectively, of the food stamps issued to households in that year. On the other hand, the two richest categories (Quintile 4 and 5) accounted for little over 12 per cent and approximately six per cent, respectively.

Analysis

However, a comparative analysis for the years 1990 to 1994 showed that the comparatively wealthier categories received much more in 1990. Information contained in the document highlighted that while the two poorest quintiles represented roughly 60 per cent of the households receiving food stamps, the two wealthiest groups accounted for approximately 21 per cent of households that received food stamps in 1990.

Additionally, the Economic and Social Survey Jamaica 1994, which is prepared by the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ), confirmed that the benefits should have gone solely to the poor.

"The Food Aid Programme is deliberately designed to supplement the food intake of persons who are in danger of becoming malnourished.

"It also caters to the nutritional intake of persons who have little or no visible income," read a section of the analytic study.

The Economic and Social Survey noted that the programme targeted 320,000 persons in December 1994 and placed the budgetary allocation for the financial year at $307.4 million. Therefore, the wealthiest groups may have received in the region of $55 million worth of food stamps in 1994.

Four years earlier, the Government tried to weed out the undeserving from among the beneficiaries. The Economic and Social Survey Jamaica 1990 revealed that the Food Stamp Programme, which was six years old at the time, underwent "major reorganisation" in that year.

The changes were occasioned by the Poverty Line Study, which was commissioned by the Government in 1989. "A new thrust has been forged to trim the list of beneficiaries so that it includes only those who absolutely have no alternative to state assistance," the Economic Survey read, accepting that some beneficiaries were not deserving of the benefit that was raised from $20 to $30 per month during that year.

A nine-month re-certification campaign in 1990 resulted in the list of beneficiaries being significantly slashed by more than a half of the approximately 439,000 beneficiaries in 1989 to little less than 208,000 beneficiaries as at December 31, 1990.

Mrs. Innerarity, however, insists that PATH is superior to its predecessors, claiming the programme has significantly slashed administrative costs and is saving the Government millions of dollars.