AN?HIV?POSITIVE?WOMAN, a mother of seven and a woman who grew up in a children’s home are among a number of people complaining that their welfare benefits have been cut or removed.
The women said they were recently informed by officials of the Welfare Department that it would no longer be paying their rent and that the grant that they received for groceries would be cut in half.
The HIV-positive woman, who is 25, said she went to the department’s Roebuck Street offices last week and was told that her rent of $700 a month for a room at an apartment complex at Lightfoot Lane, the City, would not be renewed.
“The officer told me to go back by my father and live because I would not stop selling myself in Bush Hill,” said the woman who also has a disability.
She admitted that she used to “pick fares” at Bush Hill because she “was struggling”, but she had stopped engaging in such activity because she was recently hospitalized and doctors had informed her that she had “full blown AIDS”.
