MONTEGO BAY, St James — (JIS) Staff of the Poor Relief Department and Local Government councillors in St Elizabeth were on Friday presented with 18 computer tablets as part of commitments by their parent ministry to improve their working conditions.

The Poor Relief Department received new computers and a printer to complement the mobile devices.

Minister of Local Government and Community Development Desmond McKenzie made the presentations during a special council meeting of the St Elizabeth Municipal Corporation, in Black River.

“The purpose of the tablets, especially for the councillors, is to assist them, in their work. [Regarding] the poor relief officers, I made a commitment to them in 2016 in Portland, that if we are going to lift the standard of the poor relief departments, which we are doing, then it means that we must put them in a position to do the work and do it in an effective way,” said McKenzie.

“Many of the poor relief officers throughout the country operate out of big books and some exercise books with limited resources to do the work, and we took a conscious decision to give them the tools to do the work,” he added.

The minister said there is a growing number of people who depend on the poor relief departments for assistance and, in order to keep up with this demand, “we have to improve the quality of the service by giving them the tools to undertake the work”.

“So, we are not only giving the councillors tablets, we are giving each poor relief [department] tablets, and also to give them computers and printers that will be placed in their departments to help them with the work they are doing,” he said. The presentation was done on the same day that McKenzie formally opened a drop-in centre in the parish and a day after breaking ground for a new female ward at St Manchester Infirmary.