"Feed your people," reads graffiti on a wall in Beirut, in September 2021. (Credit: Philippe Hage Boutros /L'Orient-Le Jour)
BEIRUT — The Social Affairs Ministry announced in a statement Thursday evening that it extended the World Bank-funded Emergency Social Safety Net (known as “Aman”) for another six months, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Caretaker Social Affairs minister Hector Hajjar added that the government's social assistance program, ESSN, has delivered monthly cash transfers to 76,000 households of the poorest families in Lebanon in 2022.
"The benefit for these families will be extended for an additional six months, and these families will receive one payment for the months of January and February 2023, starting from March 15," the statement said.
After the end of the registration period for the ESSN program in January of last year, roughly 20 percent of Lebanon’s population applied to receive the cash grants. Hajjar announced the start of the 2022 payments last March, though payments suffered a brief interruption in August due to a public sector employees’ strike.
The deep economic crisis that Lebanon has been embroiled in since 2019 has left more than 80 percent of the population living under the poverty line.