Welfare Benefit Board to introduce system to identify those in need of financial assistance

The Welfare Benefit Board is to introduce a system for the identification of those in factual need of financial assistance due to the current economic crisis, among the recipients of Samurdhi, Elders’ and the Physical Disability allowances.

Accordingly, a QR code system will be introduced for the people who should be entitled to the welfare subsidy.

The Chairperson of the Welfare Benefit Board, B. Wijayarathne said it is estimated that nearly 3.9 million families will apply for this program. 

He stated this while attending a press conference which is held today to inform the public about the new system to identify the people who are eligible to receive the welfare subsidy benefits.

The program will be implemented under 06 preliminary steps.

In response to a question made by a journalist on the amount of the allowance that each beneficiary would receive, Finance Secretary Mahinda Siriwardana stated that there is no specific amount or that sort of decision by the government as of yet, and the objective of this would basically facilitate only to find out the number of beneficiaries with all these data.

He also emphasized that this would be an all-island embraced exercise including 14,020 GN divisions, 340 Divisional Secretariats, 25 districts and all the 09 provinces.

“Basically if we take the number of people are already in the system, it is about 1.75 million Samurdhi beneficiary families, in addition to that about 416,000 elderly and about 72,000 disabled persons and persons with CKDU about 49,000 and total about 2.3 million.”

“And then we have identified that there are people who are in the waiting list as well. About 725,000 people are there in the waiting list under Samurdhi. Likewise there are about 1 million people. There will be some other people who lost their income and also facing difficulties, something around 500,000 people will also be there, according to our expectation.”

Mr. B. Wijayarathne further added that all together they expect about 3.9 million respondents would be there, and that it doesn’t mean that it is the entire number who will receive the benefits, but it’s a kind of number that they are expecting that would respond to this survey.