The provincial government unveiled $27.5 million in new initiatives Tuesday it hopes will help Manitobans trapped in the welfare system get into the workforce.

The four-year program, called Rewarding Work, provides incentives designed to overcome some of the barriers people receiving welfare face when they start work.

“Manitobans should always be better off working than on welfare. Yet in getting a job, too often you lose," Family Services Minister Gord Mackintosh said Tuesday in a release. "We must dismantle this welfare wall.”

Mackintosh said the program provides a great opportunity to fill the province's labour shortage.

"Immigration has gone up significantly — in fact, it has gone up 23 per cent last year — and that's tremendous, but there are Manitobans already here who we have not tapped to the extent that we can and who could enter the workforce," he said.

"There are too many of these Manitobans trapped, entangled on welfare. Let's connect the dots."

The $27.5 million in initiatives that will begin this fiscal year include:

• A new child benefit of $35 per month per child for families with annual incomes of up to $20,000. It will replace part of existing welfare benefits, but qualifying families will still receive it once they leave social assistance.  The new benefit will start in January 2008.
• A drop in child-care fees for parents using subsidized child care, starting this month, to $2 a day from $2.40, and the income parents can receive before losing the subsidy will increase by 13 per cent.
• Social-assistance recipients can receive up to $1,200 a year for work clothing and transportation, starting in June, and job seekers can receive $300 per year for general assistance starting next January, provided they have completed a personal job plan.
• For people with mental or physical disabilities, income assistance will increase by $300 annually to $1,260 in January 2008 and more will be spent on vocational rehabilitation programs to help people with disabilities find work.
• The cash asset exemptions for people with disabilities on income assistance will double, which allows families to save money for emergencies or to offset costs associated with disabilities. Starting this month, the family maximum will be $8,000.

In the following four years, the province said the plan will extend non-insured health benefits, such as drug, dental and optical coverage, to people who make the transition from welfare to work.