Basics Card outage leaves Northern Territory welfare recipients unable to buy food

Some welfare recipients in the Northern Territory have been unable to pay for essential goods and services after a widespread outage disrupted the Federal Government’s income management system.

The outage affected the Basics Card, which quarantines half the income of some welfare recipients for electronic spending at approved providers.

But Territorians on Monday had their transactions declined when they tried to use the card.

“Instead of buying groceries today, I basically had to buy…