“It was botched,” Hon. Penn declared on the National Democratic Party’s (NDP) radio programme on Monday, February 7.

He added, “You gave over five plus million dollars to persons in fishing and farming who don’t fish and farm.”

It is the strongest allegations to date from the Opposition Leader on the stimulus grant. Hon. Penn, through the House of Assmebly, had requested and received a list last year of beneficiaries under the programme from Hon. Andrew Fahie, Premier and Minister of Finance.

The radio show’s host, Akeem Pickering sought to clarify Hon. Penn’s statements, warning that ‘We are live on the radio, did you hear what you just said’.

“I am a straight shooter,” Hon. Penn replied.

“Up to yesterday persons reached out to me to say, ‘look Mr. Penn can you help me; my name is on this list. I am a fisherman; I am a farmer I am trying to get the monies that they said I received; I never received’,” Hon. Penn noted.

He added that legitimate farmers and fisherfolk have not received help.

Hon. Penn claimed that the stimulus was rushed because the collective opposition had released an economic COVID-19 recovery plan just ahead of the announcement of the stimulus.

Following the circulation of two lists proportion to be that of beneficiaries of the stimulus package, Premier Fahie said that the list was incomplete and incomplete.

However, the final list and amounts were never made public by the Government.

The grant was the subject of an Auditor General’s probe and was one of the hot button topics at the United Kingdom’s Commission of Inquiry (CoI) into allegations of corruption by Government and senior officials.

“We saw how that was taken a part by the Commission of Inquiry and the inconsistencies in the process,” Hon. Penn stated.

The Premier's Office, which administered the grant initiative, has been accused of significantly inflating the payments so that they exceeded the amounts individuals actually applied for.

Auditor General, Sonia Webster in her report dated June 21, 2021, on the stimulus grant to farmers and fisherfolk noted that farmers were paid in some cases, three times the amount they requested from Government.

Counsel to the CoI, Bilal Rawat, highlighted part of the report which identified a sample of requests made by 70 farmers which totalled $351,713. However, according to Rawat, the amount actually paid to those 70 individuals totalled just over $1M.

According to Webster, the qualification for the grant was that you either had to be registered with the Agriculture Department or present an affidavit that you are indeed a farmer for the past three years.

Webster stated that there was no information received as to how unregistered farmers qualified for the grant award.