Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Paul Mavima on Wednesday revealed that government is currently giving a $180 monthly cushioning allowance to vulnerable people.
Mavima said the government delayed to release the funds because the database of names of vulnerable people had to be cleaned first. He said:
As you know we had to delay a bit in making the cash transfers because we had to clean up the original database of vulnerable people and we now have a database with 201 000 people.
Therefore, the payments for this month started last week. People are receiving $180 per person.
This is because we thought we would marry two programmes, the one where we have always been giving $180 and the one for people who have become vulnerable as a result of the national lockdown, using the resources that have been released. We are sure that all the 201 000 will be paid $180 each this month.
Mavima further revealed that vulnerable people would be getting $300 starting from June and that this would continue until the end of the year, with more people being added to the database.
The people who have so far received the $180 included vendors and those from the informal sector whose sources of income have been affected by the national lockdown, Mavima said.