Dix­ie-Ann Dick­son

Se­nior cit­i­zens no longer have to en­dure long lines, or risk hav­ing their pen­sion cheques lost or stolen as they can now use their ATM deb­it cards to ac­cess those funds, Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh said yes­ter­day.

At the min­istry's launch of a se­nior cit­i­zens' di­rect de­posit ini­tia­tive at the Hy­att Re­gency, Port-of-Spain, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said there have sev­er­al re­ports of the el­der­ly be­ing robbed of their pen­sions, as well as in­stances where their cheques were lost in the mail.

He added: "Se­nior cit­i­zens are easy prey and this so­cial is­sue must be ad­dressed swift­ly and ve­he­ment­ly. We as a so­ci­ety must take a proac­tive ap­proach to the phys­i­cal and psy­cho-so­cial abuse se­nior cit­i­zens are faced with on a dai­ly ba­sis."

The min­is­ter said the di­rect de­posit sys­tem, which took about 18 months to get off the ground, al­lows se­nior cit­i­zens di­rect ac­cess to their pen­sion funds as the mon­ey would be de­posit­ed to their bank ac­counts. The ini­tia­tive took ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 1.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said al­though it was met with re­luc­tance by some, more than 50 per cent of the el­der­ly pop­u­la­tion –about 40,000 peo­ple – al­ready were us­ing the new sys­tem. He said a bio­met­ric card sys­tem, which would be in­tro­duced soon, will al­low se­nior cit­i­zens ac­cess to all their so­cial ben­e­fits. That, he said, would sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duce in­ci­dents of fraud and pro­vide a more se­cure sys­tem for the so­cial­ly vul­ner­a­ble.

The card is be­fore the Ten­ders Board and should be on stream by May 13. It will have elec­tron­ic fea­tures to al­low for mon­i­tor­ing of trends and the shop­ping styles of se­nior cit­i­zens. Ra­mad­hars­ingh said each card would have se­lect­ed fin­ger­prints of its own­er, which would on­ly be known to the own­er. Vi­jay Gan­gaper­sad, di­rec­tor of So­cial Wel­fare, said dis­abil­i­ty grants and pub­lic as­sis­tance would be avail­able soon through these ini­tia­tives.

When asked the cost of the bio­met­ric card ini­tia­tive, he said: "We do not have a fig­ure as yet be­cause it is still in the de­vel­op­ment stage. We have just com­plet­ed the tech­ni­cal phase and are about to em­bark on the fi­nan­cial as­pect of it. These two phas­es should be com­plet­ed by Feb­ru­ary month end."

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said Gov­ern­ment had spent $2,201,053,885.36 un­der the se­nior cit­i­zens' pen­sion fund since late 2012 when it was in­creased to $3,000 a month for peo­ple 60 years and over. An ad­di­tion­al 6,134 peo­ple ben­e­fit­ed from the ini­tia­tive be­tween Oc­to­ber 2011 and Ju­ly 2012 at an es­ti­mat­ed cost of 86,751,470.10.

Ra­mad­hars­ingh said the min­istry would con­tin­ue to fo­cus on the age­ing pop­u­la­tion, which seems to be grow­ing rapid­ly. There are more than 178,000 peo­ple in T&T over the age of 65 and the Unit­ed Na­tions es­ti­mates that by 2025 there will be more than 1.2 bil­lion peo­ple in the world over the age of 65, Ra­mad­hars­ingh said. "We will con­tin­ue to im­ple­ment poli­cies and pro­mote the well be­ing of the el­der­ly and pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­te­gra­tion," he added.