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Yesterday we spoke to a freelance reporter who says she lost vital revenue during the lockdown, and after a successful application for relief funds led nowhere, she called us to vent her frustration at the Social Security Board's inability to offer her any guidance.

Anita Nembhard, Freelance Reporter
"I go a text yesterday and my text tell me after 2 months after I apply, it says: your application for unemployment relief has been approved and has been sent to the SSB for payment. From my experience in the past I was making a lot of calls from home, so I know the form hasn't been as effective as I would have want it to, but I had to work with it because I was in lockdown for over 3 months. Only when I went inside and I spoke to somebody at customer service and I showed her my text telling her that this is what I am responding to 'miss we can't help you here, you are at the wrong spot,' she gave me this paper with 6 cell numbers to call. So I said let me make this call and 6 of them called already, no answer from any of them, voicemail. I mean to say if you have a system in place I don't see how is it that it is so frustrating. Covid-19 brought a lot to Belize. I know everything would not go as smooth as it should, but don't send misleading text to people, because I left my house where I could have stayed indoors and be much more comfortable than to get wet and probably even get sick."

But According to Economic Czar Dr. Carla Barnett, guidance won't come from the SSB, they are merely a paying agent. And if you're among those 3,000 approved relief fund applicants you'll need to send a text or an e-mail. Barnett says that when it comes to her team's efforts to ensure payouts to approved applicants it's not for lack of trying.

Hon. Dr. Carla Barnett, Economic Czar
"Ahm we've been talking about that 3,000 plus persons for a little while now. And the primary reason why we've been unable to pay is because the banking information may be inaccurate or the bank account designated my be inactive and the commercial banks will not deposit funds into an inactive account. To some extent, we've been able to get the correct bank payment information and where that has been done people have gotten payment. We spent a lot time trying to call people to get the information and many times we couldn't, because sometimes the telephone numbers on the application forms were not correct. So what we've decided to do last week for those remaining 3,000 plus persons we decided to offer them the option of switching from depositing to a bank account which we have been trying and have not been able to successfully do, to switch from the bank account to receiving a top up card and it meant that they would have to go to send that information by text message or by sending an email to unemployment@covid19.bz. So that's the mechanism that we are trying to use to reach the persons who have not been able to be paid because there are errors in their banking information. We are encouraging people who are in that group that have been experiencing difficulties in receiving payments to please send the email."

Any approved applicant unable to receive their payment via their bank or credit union can request to do so via top-up card by texting phone number 613-0095 or e-mailing unemployment@covid19.bz.