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Sign up deadline for P-EBT benefits extended to Dec. 30, 2022

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Joyetter@samoanews.com

Pago Pago, AMERICAN SAMOA — The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Nutrition Service has extended the September 30, 2022 deadline for parents to register and receive P-EBT benefits for their children to December 30, 2022.

This was confirmed by Director of Human and Social Services, Muavaefa’atasi John E. Suisala, in response to questions from Samoa News.

The approval follows a request by the DHSS for an extension for parents who have not yet registered for Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) Program benefits for their children who attended public or private schools during School Year 2021- 2022 that ended in June 2022.

 “This is great news for parents who missed the initial deadline of September 16, 2022 to register their children for P-EBT benefits.

 “We extend our gratitude and appreciation to the FNS Administrator, Cynthia Long, for her approval of our request and the FNS teams at the national and regional levels for their ongoing support of American Samoa’s food assistance needs,” said the DHSS Director.

In March, the USDA FNS approved ASG’s request to issue $8.8 million in P-EBT benefits to approximately 14,000 children after school closures and reductions in attendance and hours starting from February 2022 through June 2022 during the COVID-19 lockdown.

The P-EBT online registration portal opened on July 20, 2022, and started issuing P-EBT benefits on August 15, 2022.

 “To date, the ASNAP approved 5,806 household registrations for 11,860 children and issued $7,289,816 to 11,781 children from 5,779 households.

“A total of 177 household registrations remain pending and 205 household registrations remain un-submitted for a variety of reasons.”

In July the DHSS  “made several upgrades to the (P-EBT benefits) system to rectify the concerns raised by the parents.

 “Our systems administrator also made several upgrades to the system over the weekend to make it more user-friendly based on screenshots of error messages sent in by users. 

 “The P-EBT online registration portal automatically approves all registrations that contain information for parents and students that match the official school enrollment records.

 “The ASNAP team continues to contact parents with pending and un-submitted registrations to help them edit and submit their registrations with the correct parent/student information or advise them to go to the DOE Student Records Office to make the appropriate corrections in order for our system to automatically approve their registrations for their children to receive P-EBT benefits. 

 “Unfortunately, some of these parents are not answering their telephones while others listed the wrong telephone numbers when they registered.”

Director Muavaefa’atasi encourages all parents who have not registered their children for P-EBT benefits to do so now using the ASNAP online registration.

You can access the ASNAP online registration portal at: www.asnap.as