This coun­try spent close to $33 bil­lion on Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion (SCP) pay­ments for the ten years from 2012 to 2021.

And around $4 bil­lion more is ear­marked to be paid to­ward the SCP again this year.

Ac­cord­ing to the So­cial Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (SSIP) 2022 bud­get doc­u­ment over the pe­ri­od 2016 to 2021, gov­ern­ment’s ex­pen­di­ture on “ma­jor so­cial safe­ty net pro­grammes” av­er­aged a lit­tle over $ 7 bil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

And the li­on’s share of that was spent on SCP.

“The Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion con­tin­ued to record the high­est ex­pen­di­ture dur­ing the pe­ri­od un­der re­view. In 2016, to­tal ex­pen­di­ture amount­ed to $ 3.69 bil­lion and in 2021, ex­pen­di­ture was es­ti­mat­ed at $3.81 bil­lion. The high­est ex­pen­di­ture to the SCP dur­ing the pe­ri­od was $4.1 bil­lion in 2020,” the SSIP 2022 stat­ed.

The two grants ranked sec­ond and third in ex­pen­di­ture when to­talled did not ac­count for half of what was spent on the SCP.

“The Dis­abil­i­ty Af­fairs Grant record­ed the sec­ond-high­est ex­pen­di­ture over­all. In 2016, to­tal ex­pen­di­ture for the DAG was record­ed at $517 mil­lion and in 2021, $523 mil­lion was es­ti­mat­ed. The high­est ex­pen­di­ture for the DAG dur­ing the six-year pe­ri­od was $ 614 mil­lion in 2020,” it stat­ed.

“The Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme (CEPEP) record­ed the third-high­est over­all pro­gramme ex­pen­di­ture dur­ing the six-year pe­ri­od. In 2016, ex­pen­di­ture to­talled $532 mil­lion (high­est) and in 2021, $442 mil­lion was the es­ti­mat­ed ex­pen­di­ture,” the SSIP 2022 stat­ed.

Dur­ing the mid-year bud­get re­view held on Mon­day Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert raised the is­sues of this coun­try’s SCP pay­ments.

“The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment is get­ting an ad­di­tion­al $390 mil­lion to fa­cil­i­tate pay­ment of the Se­nior Cit­i­zens Grant. I must say Madam Speak­er this Se­nior Cit­i­zens Grant pay­ment, peo­ple don’t know the amount of mon­ey spent. It is up­wards of $3 bil­lion a year prob­a­bly clos­er to $4 bil­lion or more than $4 bil­lion a year,” Im­bert said.

Ac­cord­ing to the SSIP 2022, as at Sep­tem­ber 2021, 109,132 se­nior cit­i­zens were in re­ceipt of the new Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sions.

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices through its So­cial Wel­fare Di­vi­sion is re­spon­si­ble for the man­age­ment of the SCP.

“The con­di­tion for the re­ceipt of a pen­sion by any per­son are: the per­son must have at­tained the age of 65 years and who must have been or­di­nar­i­ly res­i­dent in T&T for a pe­ri­od of 20 years im­me­di­ate­ly pre­ced­ing the claim for a pen­sion; or for a pe­ri­od of 50 years in the ag­gre­gate,’ ac­cord­ing to the Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion Act sec­tion 4 (1).

In 2016, the sched­ule of pay­ment was ad­just­ed re­sult­ing in an in­crease in the SCP.

This ad­just­ment re­sult­ed in an in­crease in the to­tal in­come, (oth­er per­son­al in­come and SCP) to $5000.

With ef­fect from Jan­u­ary 2019 se­nior cit­i­zens would have re­ceived the new pen­sion in­creas­es rang­ing from $500- $3,500 in keep­ing with the rel­e­vant Pen­sion Bands.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­cent­ly pub­lished Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port on Pub­lic Ac­counts for the fi­nan­cial year 2021, sev­er­al dis­crep­an­cies were seen with the SCP in­clud­ing 108 in­stances where peo­ple un­der 65 were get­ting ac­cess to the pen­sion pay­ment.

In ad­di­tion to that 52,876 in­stances were found where the date of birth field was blank and there were al­so 106,794 where the en­try in the field was stat­ed as “null.”

There were 404 in­stances where “cheqnum” was “0” and “bankacc” was al­so “0” to­talling $1,296,000.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port al­so stat­ed that in­con­sis­ten­cies in the na­tion­al ID num­bers were found in 146,487 records.

There were al­so 12 in­stances found where two dif­fer­ent SCP re­cip­i­ents had the same na­tion­al ID num­ber.

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s re­port stat­ed that there were al­so a num­ber of in­stances where per­sons re­ceived more than one grant and that a pol­i­cy was not pro­vid­ed to de­fine the en­ti­tle­ment of per­sons to re­ceive mul­ti­ple grants.

Ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Boards’ 10th Ac­tu­ar­i­al Re­port, “the peo­ple of T&T are pro­tect­ed against the old-age risk by a uni­ver­sal re­tire­ment sys­tem. While there ex­ist some pri­vate pen­sion plans, the main sources of in­come for the av­er­age work­er come from the SCP and the NIS.”

For those with no oth­er sources of in­come, the SCP is $3,500.

The coun­try’s cur­rent min­i­mum wage is $17.50 an hour.

“The SCP rep­re­sents the first pil­lar and is al­most uni­ver­sal. All work­ers, ex­cept the self-em­ployed, are cov­ered by the NIS, which is the sec­ond pil­lar. The third pil­lar is com­posed of oc­cu­pa­tion­al pen­sion plans.

“Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank, the as­sets of this sec­tor rep­re­sent a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of the to­tal as­sets of the fi­nan­cial sec­tor of T&T. As at Ju­ly 31, 2015, pen­sion plan as­sets to­talled ap­prox­i­mate­ly $49.1 bil­lion. In 2015, about 51,500 work­ers in the pri­vate sec­tor were cov­ered by an oc­cu­pa­tion­al pen­sion plan. This num­ber, com­bined with the num­ber of work­ers in the pub­lic sec­tor (who are al­so cov­ered by the pub­lic sec­tor pen­sion plan) gives a cov­er­age rate of 15 per cent of the em­ployed pop­u­la­tion (18 per cent of the salaried pop­u­la­tion),” the lat­est ac­tu­ar­i­al re­port stat­ed.

The is­sue of so­cial pro­tec­tion is of para­mount im­por­tance to the so­cial sec­tor as it un­der­girds the foun­da­tion for so­cial and hu­man de­vel­op­ment, as well as the main­te­nance of so­cial sta­bil­i­ty.

T&T has been de­scribed as a mod­el in so­cial in­sur­ance for oth­er coun­tries in the Latin Amer­i­ca and Caribbean re­gion. This is be­cause the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of T&T pro­vides pro­tec­tion for over 50 per cent (634,381) of the pop­u­la­tion, with 23 ben­e­fits in sev­en cat­e­gories, ac­cord­ing to the Unit­ed Na­tions T&T 2020).

“How­ev­er, it has been re­port­ed that there are var­i­ous fac­tors that threat­en the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of the so­cial pro­tec­tion sys­tem,” the SSIP 2022 stat­ed.

On March 29, 2021 the Au­to­mat­ed Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion (AS­CP) process was launched by the MS­DFS in col­lab­o­ra­tion with iGovTT, as part of the Min­istry’s agen­da for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

This new ser­vice al­lows se­nior cit­i­zens to ap­ply for their Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion via an on­line plat­form, there­by re­duc­ing the need for this vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tion to vis­it lo­cal boards.

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