The Ministry of Labour and Social Security has officially launched the 'We Need to Know' public education campaign, which encourages compliance among the beneficiaries of the Programme for Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH).

The campaign seeks to ensure that parents and guardians of PATH beneficiaries who have started primary, or high school, or who have changed schools, inform the ministry's parish office. Failure to do this will result in the benefits being discontinued.

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It also aims to get parents and guardians, who fall under the PATH programme, to register their children attending school for the first time, and to impress upon secondary-level students the need for them to be aware of the new post-secondary initiative, whereby PATH students who have applied and are accepted in a post-secondary institution are given a one-time payment of $15,000.

Speaking at the official launch, held at Papine High School in St Andrew, on Tuesday, Andrew Gallimore, state minister in the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, said the PATH programme has a budget of some $3 billion this year, and that 80 per cent of that amount would be spent on children going to primary and secondary schools.