The State Minister for Disability Affairs, Asamo Hellen Grace has revealed that the Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment (SAGE) has not yet benefited the elderly people as expected due to the a lot of anomalies that are surrounding the program.
Asamo who also doubles as the Member of Parliament Representing Persons with Disabilities made this revelation while presenting the performance report for the Ministry of Gender, Labor and Social Development during the National Resistance Movement (NRM) manifesto week, where she noted that a lot of elder people have wrong information on their national identity cards thus missing out.
She also noted that there is need to lower the age requirement to 65 years because 80 years remain high as far as life expectancy in Uganda is concerned. “There is a huge outcry/demand for lowering the eligibility age. Also, there is a need to increase the benefit amount. This has remained stagnant at Ushs25,000 and the impact of Inflation affected the grant value.”
“Secondly, the Program is not reaching all eligible older persons due to non-registration for the National ID and understating of date of birth during NIRA registration. 43,559 registered with wrong details. Also, fees levied for change of errors on National IDs for eligible beneficiaries are prohibitive for Infirm eligible older persons; There are 5,556 eligible older persons for SAGE but have not been enrolled because they are infirm and could not move to pay points for enrolment,” she said on Wednesday.
The Minister however advised the government to conduct home-based visits, sensitization and follow-up of beneficiaries to encourage them to turn up at payments points for migration/on-boarding and sensitize and mobilize older persons to go to National Identity Registration Authority (NIRA) Offices/designated points to register for National IDs.
“Roll-out Parish Appeals Committees to support older persons in correcting errors on their National IDs. Engage the Payment Service Provider-Centenary Bank and District Local Government staff on undertaking home enrolments lastly, we need to fast-track the upgrading of the Social Registry module of the National Single Registry to facilitate beneficiary targeting,” she said.
Social Assistance Grant for Empowerment is part of the Social Protection Programme (ESP) implemented by the Government under the Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development and there are currently 6,596 beneficiaries enrolled.
Following the successful implementation of the pilot, in August 2015, Government announced a phased national rollout of the Senior Citizens Grant in different districts. In March 2016, the Ministry of Gender, Labour & Social Development signed a contract with PostBank Uganda as the new Payment Service Provider (PSP) for the Senior Citizens Grants. PostBank Uganda took over the payment service provider role from MTN who had hitherto delivered the grants using MTN Mobile Money.
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