Editorial | PATH reform and more

A year-and-half since announcing a review of the Government’s Programme for Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH), it would be timely for Pearnel Charles Jr to provide a status report on the project, including whether policymakers still believe that PATH is best mechanism to deliver support to poor Jamaicans and to help lift them out of poverty.

Indeed, there may well be questions whether evaluation of PATH, the government’s flagship social welfare support scheme, ought not be extended to other welfare programmes, to ensure that they work well and that taxpayers are receiving good value for their money.

Primarily, PATH is a conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme under which children, pregnant and lactating women and elderly people, who meet the eligibility criteria, receive bi-monthly support payments. People with disabilities can also qualify for support.

However, school-aged recipients are obligated to regularly attend school, while pregnant women have to attend health support clinics during their pregnancies and up to six months after giving birth.

For the current fiscal year the government has budgeted J$9.77 billion for PATH payments, but that doesn’t include another J$7 billion allocated for school feeding programmes for children who are on the scheme.

PATH was launched at the start of the 2000s by streamlining dozens of formal and ad hoc social safety net programmes, with clear eligibility criteria for recipients, utilising consumption levels and living conditions.

SOME SUCCESS

The PATH scheme, like with many similar CCT arrangements across the world, has been credited with some success.

Indeed, a 2021 study by Christopher O’Connor, a former policy analyst at the Planning Institute of Jamaica and an assistant professor at the College of the Holy Cross, a Jesuit undergrad school in the US, concluded that “people exposed to PATH as children are 11.5 percentage points more resilient against poverty, 7.4 percentage points more resilient against food poverty, and are more likely to obtain a college level education and be employed than they would have been in the absence of the program”.

“Moreover, the long-run benefits of the program are strongest after the child reaches their early 20s,” the study said. “These results are important insofar as they provide important evidence of the potential of CCT programmes to break intergenerational poverty by directly looking at how CCTs mitigate the risk of poverty.”

However, in recent years there have been suggestions that many of PATH’s eligibility criteria, such as whether recipients have internal plumbing, flush toilets, washing machines, television sets, are no longer relevant, and in many cases outdated – as was argued in this newspaper this week by letter writer, Tashiba Julius, who signed as president of a group named St Mary Ambassadors for Change.

“As it stands, many individuals and families who genuinely need support are being denied access based on outdated and unrealistic assessment criteria,” Tashiba Julius wrote.

Mr Charles, the minister for labour and social security, made a similar argument at the townhall meeting a year ago, observing that conditions in Jamaica had changed since PATH was crafted.

“Certainly, if you asked, at that time, who had a cell phone and what cell phone, it might not have been everybody who had a cell phone.,” he said. “But right now, everybody has a phone ... Circumstances in your home were different. Things that are normal now were not normal then.”

REVAMP

In telling Parliament about the PATH review in September, 2023, Mr Charles said “the revamped … programme” would place “renewed emphasis on education” aimed “breaking the cycle of poverty through knowledge and skill development”.

But how much the programme has been revamped, and what changes are contemplated isn’t yet clear.

However, while PATH is the centre of focus, we recall, too, the report earlier this year by the auditor general Pamela Monroe Ellis that pointed to overlap in a raft of social housing schemes and the absence of overarching legislation covering social welfare.

A social safety net reform programme was agreed on over two decades ago. The outlines of a National Assistance Act to govern various welfare offerings were crafted. Then the process stalled.

It must be restarted as part of a comprehensive review and overhaul of the welfare system, that is more efficient for taxpayers and beneficiaries.

Recall: before PATH there were over 50 programmes seeking to provide support to Jamaicans who needed assistance.

Indeed, that was the strategic direction agreed on two decades ago, under a Social Safety Net Reform Programme, which should have started with a new overarching legislation, the National Assistance Act, that would capture most programmes.

A bill was in fact drafted by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, but as was observed by the auditor general, two decades “efforts to complete the National Assistance Bill did not progress”.

“Therefore, Jamaica does not have a comprehensive, overarching legislation governing the administration of social welfare,” Ms Monroe Ellis said.