He said an aggressive public relations and outreach campaign will be launched next year to gather information that can help the government properly assess people’s needs.

This is to ensure assistance goes to those most in need.

“Many times persons who really need the support don’t come to the departments to apply for that support. And I have told the head of the Social Development Department that we need to be more aggressive in our outreach to our vulnerable population,” Penn explained.

“So we expect to get that done early 2023. You can expect an aggressive public relations campaign being launched to get to those vulnerable persons within our society,” Penn said.

The Health Ministry has receive the largest share of the recurrent allocations in the 2023 budget, with some $73.07 million or 18.3 per cent allocated for spending next year.

In giving an update on the overall operations of his ministry, Penn said teams have been severely challenged in the last five years because of major disasters that impacted the territory and which required the Ministry of Health & Social Development to lead the response.

He added that responding to the community’s socio-economic needs and providing health services is a huge undertaking that has to be done in partnership with the private sector and non-governmental organisations.

To that end, Penn said he has been focused on rebuilding relationships in these sectors to better address the needs of the community.