New report on poverty situation in Seychelles to be released soon |18 May 2020

A new report on the poverty situation in Seychelles will be released soon, the principal secretary for poverty alleviation, Alvin Laurence, has said.

This follows the announcements made by the Minister for Family Affairs Mitcy Larue in the National Assembly last week on the number of applications for welfare assistance which has doubled for the month of April.

Minister Larue informed Assembly members that compared to 522 in February, 780 in March, a total of 2748 applications for assistance were received by the office of the Agency for Social Protection (ASP) in April.

PS Laurence has said that just before the country was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, his office was on the point of releasing a new report on the poverty situation in Seychelles. He said this has been delayed but is expected to be released soon.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr Laurence pointed out that new poverty trends have been surfacing which called for a change in the strategy the office for poverty alleviation had adopted for this year.

“This is because the areas of focus is now shifting more towards matters related to employment. While previously we were continuously talking to people on the importance of work and to work as much as they can to amass some savings, to preserve it so it can come in handy and useful during the hard times,” remarked PS Laurence.

He noted that during the present situation it is no longer easy to tell people the same thing as employment options are really limited and the dynamic economy that we had, which was allowing people to make some savings, to have more than one job, is no more and we are aware that the unemployment rate is expected to rise considerably.

“Therefore we are focusing more on encouraging people who are in employment to remain in their jobs even though for many of them it is no longer possible in the present economic situation to amass as much benefits as before,” Mr Laurence remarked.

Meanwhile Mr Laurence has pointed out that most of the applications are from people from a variety of sectors namely those who are self employed, casual workers, those who are in employment but whose salaries have been reduced especially those in the tourism sector who have lost their different benefits thus reducing their purchasing power considerably, those with expenses that cannot be avoided, particularly personal loans.

Among the main challenges facing the different agencies presently is to boost the creation of new jobs, step up re-skilling programmes to put more people in employment as soon as possible.

He noted that prior to the COVID-19 situation, especially for those people who were self employed or working in the private sector, there were lots of work opportunities to amass wealth. Today while it is possible for some people to still make some profits even though not as much, there are others who are not getting anything as a result of the situation.

Mr Laurence is therefore encouraging those people employed by government whose employment is secured, to remain in their jobs and to take it more seriously as being terminated or quitting from their present job for another one will not be necessarily as easy in the present situation.

In line with that PS Laurence has pointed out that there is a lot of work to be done to ensure people stay in their job in order to continue reducing the number of people seeking financial assistance.

He further noted that people who for a reason or another find themselves out of employment, it is also a time for them to learn different skills in order to boost their income.

Meanwhile Mr Laurence has said that people who have lost their livelihood are reporting not only to the office of poverty alleviation but to other departments and agencies under the office of the Ministry of Family Affairs for support namely the social department, and the Agency for Social Protection (ASP) as well as to the department of employment in the Ministry of Employment, Immigration and Civil Status. But according to statistics the office for poverty alleviation receives and reviews every week, the majority of people in need of financial support are reporting to the ASP through their district offices.

He has admitted that there is a need for all the different agencies to work even more closely with his office for more concerted outcomes namely in terms of organising re-skilling programmes, creating new job opportunities…

It is to be recalled that the role of the office for poverty alleviation is to carry out research in order to better advise the government on the best ways to eliminate poverty in our society.

As part of its research work, the small team at the office for poverty alleviation also receive members of the public with poverty related cases which are then referred to the concerned agencies. Its research work also consists of district visits to collect good information to better advise government.

But is this not a sign of duplicating the work being carried out by other agencies? PS Laurence pointed out that the role of other agencies is to implement the different recommendations brought forward by the office for poverty alleviation and approved by government.

Marie-Anne Lepathy