Eight years after it was set up, and with more than $35 million in its account, Government’s Catastrophe Fund has not been able to assist a single Barbadian who suffered a disaster.
So last Thursday, Minister of Finance Chris Sinckler took a paper to Cabinet asking his colleagues to agree to his plan to abandon the fund, repeal the act governing it and hold the money in the Treasury until a decision is taken on what to do with it.
The fund was conceptualised in 2007 during the dying days of the Owen Arthur administration “in response to the rising number of house fires, sustained largely by citizens within the lower economic bracket, whose properties were not insured”.
Please read the full story in today’s Sunday Sun, or in the eNATION edition.