Broken System
By: Nadia Bashir
Updated: September 3, 2009
32-year-old Chiemeka Prince says the Indiana Department of Family and Social Services cheated her out of food stamp benefits after failing to confirm a lie her relative told the agency about Princes residency.
Prince says her relative told the agency she had moved out of the home they shared together and was no longer a member of the household. Consequently the state cut Princes benefits. Prince says she has tried to resolve the problem with the agency but has been unable to get it fixed.
Princes complaint is echoed by thousands across the state. More than one-million people in Indiana receive welfare benefits. Indiana privatized its welfare system with IBM in 2006 at the cost of $1.34 billion. The new system uses a call center. The old system used caseworkers and face-to-face contact.
A spokesman for FSSA reviewed Princes case and found no error. The spokesman also said that while FSSA agrees the new privatized system is broken, in Princes case the system worked exactly as it should.
Since switching over to a private system the error rate has jumped from 4% to 18%. The state has paid IBM an additional $118 million to fix the problems in the new system. The deadline for that is the end of September.
Prince is not comforted and says she will continue to fight for her benefits, "How would they feel if their family couldnt eat?"
