MVR 33.2 million disbursed as frontline allowance

Finance Ministry announced on Wednesday that it has disbursed MVR 33.2 million in frontline allowance to workers engaged in frontline work to curb the coronavirus outbreak.

In a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Finance Ministry’s Chief Financial Budget Executive Saruvash Adam that MVR 33.5 million has been authorized for disbursement as frontline allowance.

He said that Finance Ministry has disbursed MVR 33.2 million, while the disbursement of the remaining MVR 300,000 remains pending.

The decision to pay an additional daily allowance of MVR 200 to MVR 500 for frontline workers was announced by Finance Minister Ibrahim Ameer in early May.

Workers who have been engaged in frontline work in response to the coronavirus outbreak since March 7 – when Maldives had identified its first case – are eligible for the allowance.

Frontline allowance has been disbursed to 2,948 people who have been engaged in frontline work from March 7 to July 15 so far.

Frontline workers engaged in high risk tasks are entitled to a daily allowance of MVR 500, while workers engaged in medium risk tasks are entitled to MVR 250, and workers engaged in low risk tasks are entitled to MVR 200.

“We are disbursing frontline allowance from March onwards. But we made the payment in July, and also in August,” said Saruvash.

He said that the frontline workers who have yet to be paid the allowance have also been approved for payment, but that their payments were delayed to verify some information.

“There are MVR 300,000 which have yet to be paid. That is to verify account information. We will make the payment once the verification process is complete. We faced these same issues last time as well,” he said.

Finance Ministry is in the process of verifying information on 41 frontline workers.

Meanwhile, frontline workers from MNDF and Maldives Police Service have yet to be paid their frontline allowance.

“We have mostly paid allowances from March 7 to July 15. The institutions which have yet to be paid mainly include MNDF and police,” said Saruvash.

He said that the delay in making the payments to frontline workers from the two institutions is due to several decisions that needed to be made regarding guidelines for disbursement of allowances.

“Because we need to request some clarifications from them. We are in the process of negotiations regarding this,” he said.

Saruvash said that Finance Ministry has consolidated the guidelines compiled by MNDF and police and sent it to the President’s Office for approval.

He said that frontline workers from MNDF and the police will be paid their frontline allowance as soon as Finance Ministry receives approval.

Information available at this time shows 3,246 frontline workers from MNDF and 3,017 frontline workers from the police will be disbursed MVR 80 million as frontline allowance.