Over 200,000 children to benefit from $2.2B in cash grant next month

Jun 24, 2022 News

Kaieteur News – The Ministry of Education (MOE) will commence this year’s distribution of the ‘Because We Care’ cash grant and uniform vouchers next month, with over 200,000 children in public and private schools to benefit.

Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand (Photo credit: MOE)

This was announced by the Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand who on Wednesday said that “at the end of July, every single child in school will receive $30,000 because we care.”
The ‘Because We Care’ initiative is a brainchild of the PPP/C government and back in 2015 it was discontinued by the APNU/AFC regime when it took up office. The initiative which was reintroduced last year is aimed at improving students’ attendance across all levels. Senior Minister with the responsibility of Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh in presenting this year’s budget had announced that the government will increase the uniform grant from $4,000 to $5,000 per child. This he said will place $200 million of disposable income in the homes of 200,150 children attending both public and private school.
As it relate to the ‘Because We Care’ cash grant, the minister said that this year the grant would increase from $15,000 to $25,000 per child and this will place an additional amount of $2 billion in the homes of the same 200,150 children.
Minister Manickchand who was speaking at the Georgetown Department of Education Regional Awards Ceremony for the year 2020/2021 on Wednesday said too, that text books will be given to every child at the primary level as was done for children in Grades five and six. “By September, all students in Grade Seven to 13 will receive the Mathematics, English and Literature textbooks they need. And over the next two years we will work to ensure every secondary school student has the textbooks they need,” Manickchand shared. In this year’s education budget, the sum of $1.2 billion was earmarked to procure textbooks for school students.