Unclaimed education cash grants for distribution on Thursday

A substantial number of parents and guardians were unable to collect the $30,000 ‘Because we care’ schools children’s cash grant during the scheduled period of distribution and as such, the Ministry of Education will distribute the unclaimed grants on Thursday.

This is according to a social media post from the Education Ministry and it follows a massive country-wide distribution exercise held two weeks ago.

Parents who could not uplift the grant on the scheduled date before and parents whose child’s name was not on the distribution list during the first phase of the cash grant rollout are asked to visit the listed regional locations to uplift the grant on Thursday.

The locations are:

This year each child was scheduled to receive $25,000 under the ‘Because We Care’ initiative. The schoolchildren’s uniform grant was also increased to $5,000, meaning that each child would get a total of $30,000.

And some 200,000 children, both in public and private schools, were targeted over the four-day distribution period (Phase One). Education Minister Priya Manickchand recently told the News Room that just over 10,000 cash grants were not collected.

This ‘Because We Care’ initiative was first instituted by the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) in 2014. After returning to office in 2020, the PPP/C administration reinstated the grant and promised to incrementally increase it until it gets to $50,000.

Minister Manickchand hinted previously that this sum could possibly increase beyond $50,000.