$ 20 million dollars-this is the total amount that the Agricultural Department which funds the Supplemental Nutrition Program will have to pay to 48,000 families in Georgia. This stems out from a federal lawsuit against the Georgia Department of Human Service.
It's the USDA that provides funding's for Georgia's food stamps. These stamps have been plagued with controversies for the past years. When the issuance of the food stamps stopped, some residents had to stop paying rent, or even cut budgets on medicine just to provide food for the table. According to Marc Cohan of the National Center for law and Economic Justice, it has caused serious harm to household considering that they are the most vulnerable people. The elderly, the working poor, families with young children and the disabled.
Filed in early 2014, the class action lawsuit assumed that Georgia failed to follow federal law that many food stamp application and renewal were not processed and renewed on time and some were even denied.
In 2013, the agency introduced a new centralized call-in system but after an 18-month testing phase, it establishes itself as a frustrating failure. Residents could not get through the line and b said that they even have been placed on hold for hours, not including more than a thousand calls unanswered every month. Despite previous promises of upgrade and improvement, the system still didn't deliver. Aside from the system, the agency was understaffed and poorly trained workers manned the facility. One of the residents, Roberta Lewis, who has a liver disease and a disabled son had testified to this claims.
In the middle of the crisis, DFCS Bobby Cagle was appointed to seek out the problem, back in 2014. Millions of dollars for payment for workers overtime were allocated just to trickle down the backlogs of a thousand cases. He then announced that they will get rid of the system, switching back to manual work in local DFCS offices. The overhauled system showed much improvement, but the challenges of the past and future still remains.
The department has sent out notifications letters to residents and are advised to check their eligibility. The expected pay out per family will be $463.
