The Directorate General – Social Security, said children’s allowance payments were made regularly at 13-week intervals and 7 July was the first payment for the 2007/2008 benefit year. It was replying to a statement by Marie-Louise Coleiro-Preca, MLP spokesman on the subject, who said there were beneficiaries who had not yet received their children’s allowance cheque.

In January this year, the Directorate General said, prospective beneficiaries for children’s allowance were sent an application form, which was to be completed and sent in with the necessary documentation by the end of April. This would have permitted the payment of children’s allowance to be issued on the first payment date of 7 July. An e-government service through which applications for children’s allowance could be made online was also introduced at the beginning of the year.

By the deadline of 30 April, over 24,000 applications for children’s allowance were received. On 7 July, 26,591 payments of children’s allowance were issued, meaning that the directorate had processed applications even though they were received after the closing date of 30 April.

In fact, the department carries out weekly processes in order to issue the benefit dues as soon as they are processed. The directorate has no pending applications that are complete with all details that can be processed. Processes to finalise those applications which were sent to the directorate recently and those with missing information/data are ongoing.

The remaining applications pertain to applicants who have not satisfied the means test for such a benefit, applications which have only been received recently by this directorate and are therefore still in the process of evaluation, and applications which were submitted with missing information or data making it impossible for the directorate to determine whether the applicant qualifies for such a benefit.

In the case of missing information or data, the directorate has already contacted or is in the process of contacting the applicants in order to provide the missing information. As soon as this information and/or data are provided by the applicant, the application forms will be assessed and dues issued immediately on a weekly basis.

The directorate said that while it may be difficult to contact the children’s allowance section due to the heavy traffic of phone calls at this time of the year, information may also be obtained during office hours from the Social Security District offices or from the Social Policy Information Centre (SPIC) of the Ministry for the Family and Social Solidarity on tel.: 159, from Monday to Saturday, from 8am to 8pm.

Contrary to the impression that may have been given by Labour MP Marie-Louise Coleiro Preca, there was no problem with the process for the award of child allowances and the directorate in collaboration with SPIC was doing its best to ensure that the public had access to all the necessary information on social benefits.