A grocery assistance program in Orange Walk South is now at the center of an accountability controversy, and it all comes down to one official stamp. Several grocery vouchers distributed through the constituency office of Area Representative Jose Mai carried the stamp of the Ministry of Agriculture. Some of those vouchers have already been redeemed at Dickerson Family Mart in Orange Walk. The discovery is raising questions because Mai has been removed from his post as Minister of Agriculture for the past ten months. So why was the ministry’s stamp being used on vouchers issued through his constituency’s food assistance program? We contacted Mai for an explanation. He told News Five that he also learned about the stamped vouchers today and described the matter as a simple administrative error. According to Mai, his secretary mistakenly used the Ministry of Agriculture stamp instead of the constituency office’s stamp. Mai says his office will correct the mistake and use the proper constituency stamp on the vouchers going forward. But that explanation does not settle the wider issue. If Mai has been away from the Agriculture Ministry for ten months, why does his constituency team still have access to an official ministry stamp? It is also unclear how many vouchers carried the stamp, whether all of them were redeemed at the same business and what safeguards exist to prevent the unauthorized use of government property. For now, Mai maintains that it was an oversight.
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