BEIRUT: The Social Affairs Ministry will soon start providing aid to the poor across the country in line with its National Poverty Targeting Program, the representative of the social affairs minister said Sunday. “The benefits of this program will be provided very soon; within two months we will start providing aid ... to families who are under the poverty lines,” said Jean Mrad, who represented Social Affairs Minister Wael Abu Faour in a gathering in Akkar on the invitation of the ministry. The program is in collaboration with the World Bank and the Italian and Canadian governments, primarily to help those individuals living on less than $2.4 a day through providing in-kind aid. “The program will provide the free registration of the students from these families in public schools from kindergarten to secondary classes,” the spokesman added. He noted that these students would be entitled to free books, adding that the targeted families would receive health cards, granting them free access to public hospitals and to medications for chronic diseases. The ministry’s gathering was also attended by Akkar MPs Mouin Merabi and Nidal Tohme and locals.