Each week, the Guardian An­gel col­umn high­lights com­plaints sent in by you, the con­sumer, and pro­vides ready so­lu­tions or di­rects you to the ap­pro­pri­ate re­source.Prob­lem: Cyn­tra Achong of Guardian Me­dia Ltd said, "I re­cent­ly tried pay­ing a TSTT bill at Re­pub­lic Bank us­ing a Roy­al Bank cheque and was ad­vised that the bank does not ac­cept RBC cheques."As a con­sumer this seems rather in­con­ve­nient. I won­der if the Guardian An­gel can in­ves­ti­gate this mat­ter, since I am sure a lot of oth­er con­sumers have ex­pe­ri­enced this in­con­ve­nience."With the Bankers' As­so­ci­a­tion hav­ing fa­cil­i­tat­ed links across the bank­ing net­work, is it not un­usu­al to have this prac­tice, which ap­pears to be some­what dis­crim­i­na­to­ry in this day and age?"

So­lu­tion: Re­pub­lic Bank ex­plained that this prac­tice is spe­cif­ic to cus­tomers pay­ing TSTT bills and has been the bank's pol­i­cy for sev­er­al years.When pay­ing a TSTT bill, on­ly cash, funds from a Re­pub­lic ac­count (when you swipe your card at the teller) or a Re­pub­lic cheque are ac­cept­ed. How­ev­er, when pay­ing oth­er bills, one can do so us­ing cheques drawn from oth­er banks.

Prob­lem: Agri­cul­tur­al of­fi­cer Dhaneish Ramdin re­cent­ly re­tired from the Min­istry of Lands and Food Pro­duc­tion af­ter 16 years of ser­vice.Mr Ramdin asked the Guardian An­gel for in­for­ma­tion on how to ac­cess any re­tire­ment or NIS ben­e­fits he has ac­crued.

So­lu­tion: The Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board pro­vides two sources of re­tire­ment fund­ing: a re­tire­ment pen­sion and a re­tire­ment grant.

Cit­i­zens qual­i­fy for the month­ly re­tire­ment pen­sion at any time be­tween the ages of 60 and 65 if they are re­tired, or at age 65 whether re­tired or not. They must al­so have ac­quired at least 750 con­tri­bu­tions.The re­tire­ment grant, on the oth­er hand, is a one-time pay­ment to those who have reached re­tire­ment age but have sub­mit­ted few­er than 750 con­tri­bu­tions.Ap­pli­cants need to fill out the NI 82–the re­tire­ment ben­e­fit ap­pli­ca­tion form (which can be found on NIB's Web site or at any NIB ser­vice cen­tre)–and sub­mit their birth cer­tifi­cate, any sup­port­ing af­fi­davits and mar­riage (and di­vorce) cer­tifi­cate for mar­ried or di­vorced women.Claims must be sub­mit­ted three months be­fore age 65, if not re­tired; age 60 if re­tir­ing at 60; or three months be­fore the date you plan to re­tire be­tween the ages 60 and 65 if you are still em­ployed.Re­tirees have 12 months to ap­ply for the NIB re­tire­ment pen­sion or a "late claim let­ter giv­ing good cause why claim was made late" will be nec­es­sary but will not guar­an­tee ac­cep­tance of your re­tire­ment claim.Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion can be ac­cessed via NIB's Web site–www.nibtt.net; call­ing the hot­line, 663-4647, or by vis­it­ing any NIB ser­vice cen­tre in the coun­try.