As consumer product prices continue to rise, the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) is to offer help to low-income and disadvantaged families by giving away 16,854 tonnes of rice.
“About 221,000 people from low-income families, 113,000 low or medium-income senior citizens, 262,000 low or medium-income mentally and physically challenged individuals and 22,000 people from high-risk families — senior citizens living alone or families in special circumstances — are entitled to receive free rice from the government,” Minister of the Interior Lee Yi-yang (李逸洋) told a news conference at the ministry yesterday.
“In total, 626,000 people will benefit from the free rice program,” he said.
“Through the program, we hope to help citizens living in poverty during this period of consumer product price rises,” Lee said.
Low-income family members will be entitled to receive two 10kg bags of rice this year, while people in the other categories will receive two 5kg bags of rice, Lee said.
Agriculture and Food Agency Director Huang You-tsai (黃有才) said that the rice to be distributed would be newly harvested — no more than one year old — and that it would come from the government’s backup rice supplies.
“It will not affect the regular rice market or cause a rice shortage in any way,” Huang said.
Although this is not the first time that the government has given out rice, this year’s program is being executed a little differently from the past.
“In the past, we usually requested that local governments report the amount of rice required, but that way of running the program proved to be quite inefficient,” Huang said.
This year, the central government is taking the initiative by actively making a list of qualified recipients from household registration records and will help local governments by covering 50 percent of the delivery costs, Lee said.
Distribution of the rice will start on May 1 and continue until May 15.
“The second phase of the distribution has been planned, but the exact dates will be left to the new government to decide,” Huang said.
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