Puerto Rico, Still Reeling From Old Disasters, Is Slammed by Covid-19
The food bank, Comedores Sociales, said that it received 8,000 requests for help in the first two months of the pandemic. Paola Aponte Cotto, a worker there, said she spends 20 hours a week on the phone, fielding requests.
“We’ve received calls from people crying,” Ms. Aponte said. “The callers who are most shocked are the ones who lost their jobs.”
Puerto Rico’s new labor secretary, Carlos Rivera Santiago, acknowledged that there were delays in getting unemployment checks to those who needed them, but said the government had opened more offices and improved online services to address the backlog. After weeks of chaotic scenes like the one Mr. Soto experienced, the government implemented a more orderly indoor process, with socially distanced seats where weary applicants wait for their appointments.
More than 300,000 people are now getting benefits, Mr. Rivera Santiago said, while total claims in two available assistance programs have reached 500,000.
“It’s a challenge, and one Puerto Rico is going to confront,” he said. “We have to reinvent ourselves, change the way we work. Remote work has become the order of the day, and that was not very usual in Puerto Rico.”
He stressed that the key to recovery will be injecting money into the economy.
Puerto Rico is expected to receive $13 billion in Covid-related federal funds, according to the Financial Oversight and Management Board, the agency in New York that has managed Puerto Rico’s finances since it defaulted on $72 billion in debt. The board has estimated that Puerto Rico’s economy will contract by 4 percent.
In March, Governor Vázquez announced a $787 million stimulus package, which included $160 million in grants to small businesses and the self-employed. The government also set aside some special Covid-related federal grants to help heavily affected sectors like hospitals and tourism. About $350 million in federal funds went to the private sector to help pay employees at businesses that were disrupted, according to a Puerto Rico government report.
