The government has begun disbursing frontline allowances for officers of the Maldives National Defense Force (MNDF) and the Maldives Police Service (MPS).

A media official at the Ministry of Finance confirmed the matter to RaajjeMV.

As such, MVR 24 million was approved by the ministry for 3,334 MNDF officers and MVR 20.5 million for 3,184 police officers on September 17.

Authorities had decided to disburse allowances to frontline workers in the country’s Covid-19 response efforts, from March to June after President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih announced the decision on May 7.

The allowances are disbursed in three main categories; the first one comprises of high-risk workers who are required to come into direct contact with Covid-19 patients. Coming at second, medium-risk workers are those that require to work with high-risk workers but do not come into direct contact with Covid-19 patients. The third category, the low-risk category, is for workers of the Health Emergency Operations Centre (HEOC).

A MVR 500 allowance is given to high-risk workers on a daily basis and MVR 250 is allocated for the second category workers per day. Workers under the third category are entitled to MVR 200 allowances per day.

Earlier, Minister of Finance Ibrahim Ameer noted that allowances are being disbursed under an established system and that they are being paid with “proper documentation and authorization needed for audits and internal control, promoting accountability and due process.”

According to the ministry’s latest statistics, a total of MVR 33.2 million had been disbursed as frontline allowances to a total of 2,948 frontline workers by September 3.

This comes at a time a number of frontline workers in the island nation are testing positive for the new strand of coronavirus, which surfaced in the Maldives on March 7.