Social Security split on supplementary change
EMPLOYMENT & Social Security is split on its proposal to clamp down on guest workers claiming supplementary benefit.
Two of its members, Emilie Yerby and John Gollop, are against the move, which is expected to affect around 800 people, and have refused to put their name to it.
The proposition would see people living in multiple occupancy houses being required to live in the island for at least five years before being entitled to the supplementary benefit rent and personal allowances.
Deputies Yerby and Gollop said most people came to the island to work and were net contributors as opposed to a drain on resources.
'Supplementary benefit is a benefit of last resort,' she said.
'It is payable to people who face significant financial hardship and have nowhere else to turn. As an island community, we should think very seriously before placing restrictions on it that have nothing to do with a person's financial situation, need, or ability to work.
'Given the committee's wider mandate for equality and social inclusion, placing such a restriction on a sub-set of our population, who are living here entirely legally, seemed unconscionable to me.
'We'll need them more and more as our population grows older and, if they fall on hard times, we should treat them decently, as we would any of our citizens.'
