Ten out of 212 indigenous communities have thus far collected their Jubilee grants, a release from GINA yesterday said.
The grants were awarded as part of the 50th independence anniversary celebrations.
According to Minister within the Ministry of Indigenous Peoples’ Affairs, Valerie Garrido-Lowe, the other communities are in the process of finalising and preparing their proposals for submission to the Ministry.
Garrido-Lowe told GINA that most of the 10 communities that have collected the grants, have been using the money to complement existing sustainable projects within their communities.
She said that others have been using their funds to complete projects that they had started with money received under the previous government’s Presidential Grant Programme.
Though the majority of the villages have yet to collect the grant, Garrido-Lowe said that she is not worried. She explained that an examination of what obtained during the collection of the annual Presidential Grant showed that a lot of communities did so in the latter half of the year and for that reason, the distribution process will continue until the end of the year.
The Jubilee grants range in value from $1M to $1.5M. They are expected to be used for a specific sustainable, green project, designed to create economic independence within the communities.
