The government of Antigua and Barbuda has given formal approval to a transformative digital initiative designed to overhaul the broken system of collecting and distributing court-ordered child maintenance payments, a move crafted to address a years-long crisis that has left thousands of vulnerable children and their caregivers in financial precarity.
The green light for the project, headlined by the custom-built Main Collect mobile and web application, was announced publicly by Director General of Communications Maurice Merchant during a press briefing held immediately after Friday’s Cabinet meeting. Merchant detailed that the digital platform was built to streamline electronic transactions for child support and bring greater transparency and oversight to legally mandated financial obligations for parents.
Cabinet members based their decision on a detailed presentation delivered by senior Family Court officials, including Registrar Francis Crown and Crown Counsel Alicia Asker, alongside the local software development team that spent months building the tailored system. The presentation laid bare the deep-rooted administrative and enforcement challenges that have long plagued the island nation’s existing child maintenance framework, leaving court staff struggling to track payments and pursue non-compliant parents.
Official data shared with the Cabinet put the number of men with active court-ordered child maintenance obligations at between 1,500 and 2,500. Widespread non-payment among this group has created cascading financial hardship for single mothers, legal guardians and the children who rely on these monthly payments to cover basic needs from housing to education and healthcare.
According to the project timeline, the Main Collect application is on track to launch full operations across Antigua and Barbuda within six months. The platform has already secured formal approval from the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, and regional planners have set a long-term goal to roll the system out to all 11 member states of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) to standardize child maintenance processes across the region.
Unlike the outdated manual processing system currently in place, the new digital tool will allow paying parents to submit child maintenance funds electronically from any smartphone, tablet or computer. Recipients will be able to securely log into the system to track incoming payments, confirm deposits and check for outstanding balances in real time, eliminating the long wait times and information gaps that have been common under the current system. For court and enforcement officials, the platform will provide instant access to up-to-date compliance data, making it far faster to identify and pursue persistent defaulters.
In a nod to the complexity of the non-payment crisis, Merchant emphasized that Cabinet officials do not see digital modernization as a silver bullet for chronic non-compliance. Alongside approving the new platform, the body held in-depth discussions on complementary enforcement measures that will be paired with the technological upgrade to increase compliance rates.
Under active consideration are a series of policy changes: targeted legislative amendments that would increase the severity of penalties for parents who consistently refuse to meet their obligations, the creation of a public central register that names persistent delinquent payers, and expanded formal partnerships with local employers to enable automatic salary deductions for non-compliant individuals, cutting through the delays that have long derailed enforcement efforts.