Ten people that get social welfare from the Government and live in high climate risk places received micro insurance certificates today which will allow them to get cash relief days after being affected by a natural disaster.
The cash payout will be $400 and the premium is covered by donors.
This project is run by the UN World Food Programme and the UN Capital Development Fund and funding is provided by the Australian and New Zealand Governments.
Social welfare recipients will receive payouts within three to five days after a natural disaster with no verification of loss required for the money to be processed either through their bank account, M-PAISA or MyCash.
Lead Technical Specialist – Insurance and Climate Adaptation at the UN Capital Development Fund, Krishnan Narasimhan says the ambition of the Ministry of Women, Children and Poverty Alleviation is to extend social welfare protection through climate risk insurance to all their beneficiaries but there is an economic cost.
He says right now they have 274 welfare beneficiaries from the Western and Central Divisions covered under the climate risk insurance pilot scheme.
Narasimhan adds they want to scale it up to about 3,000 welfare beneficiaries this year but it is a learning curve because with this group of beneficiaries there is a lot of awareness that needs to be done. He says in the case of social welfare beneficiaries the premium of micro climate risk insurance has to be paid by a donor or the Government because the social welfare recipients cannot afford to pay the premium.
Narasimhan adds they are working with two local insurers, FijiCare and Sun Insurance.
The ten insurance certificate recipients also received mobile phones from Vodafone and Digicel.
