Former Public Service head Reynold Cooper is finding it “very difficult” to understand how a public servant could have included the controversial amendment in the Senior Citizens’ Pension and Public Assistance Bill without the knowledge of the line minister.
Cooper, who is also first vice president of the Trinidad and Tobago Association of Retired Persons (TTARP), believes the savings cap of $25,000 was withdrawn due to public backlash, saying yesterday that such an error as outlined by the Attorney General is “very rare” and “not normal at all.”
“Because you see a note to Cabinet is normally taken by the minister. A public officer cannot take a note to Cabinet. What happens is that the officers will prepare the note on behalf of the minister and send it to the minister. The minister is the one who takes the note to Cabinet. So, it means that it is the minister’s responsibility to go through it to make sure what is in the note is what the minister wants to present to Cabinet,” Cooper explained.
Cooper, who had over 30 years of experience in the public service, added, “I find it very difficult to understand how come a public servant can do a note and submit it without the minister knowing anything about it.”
He said this is why ministers have advisors.
“And if the minister does not have the time to go through the note, at least what the minister should do, in my view, is to give it to their advisor and say listen, go through this for me and see if this covers the areas we raised in the previous discussions,” Cooper said.
But Cooper said the TTARP is pleased the amendment, which would have seen applicants disqualified for having more than $25,000 in savings, will be removed.
“We are happy with that response because we had a problem with the limit of $25,000, which we felt was too low,” he said.
Meanwhile, former attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj told Guardian Media that Armour’s explanation does not conform with the procedure as he knew it while he held that post.
“Before a bill goes to Parliament, there will be a legislative committee and the Attorney General used to chair that committee, I used to chair it. And we’d go through the bill to make sure that before the bill goes to Parliament, it represents the government’s policy. Normally, before a bill goes to Parliament, the Cabinet approves the policy. The bill then is drafted by the AG’s department, the AG has to make sure it complies with government policy and then it reaches the Parliament,” he explained.
Maharaj added, “Now I do not know if that procedure has changed but that is the procedure I know. So based on that procedure, it would have meant that Cabinet would have had to approve that policy and the Attorney General’s department in a committee chaired by the AG would have approved it.”
Meanwhile, political scientist Dr Bishnu Ragoonath said it is obvious that Government backtracked on Wednesday because of the public’s reaction to the amendment. He said Government recognised they could pay the political price if the bill became law.
“It is a clear case of incompetence by those in power and more importantly, I think the Government has become so careless in what they are doing. And this whole thing follows the decision to accept the salary increase by the SRC, it points to a direction that the Government seemingly does not care about what the population thinks,” he said.
“However, yesterday, the reaction was clear that they realised that their supporters would be the most impacted by this bill if it becomes law and to that extent, they had no choice but to backtrack on it.”
Ragoonath underscored that the day before Armour announced that the amendment was an error, Minister of Social Development and Family Services Donna Cox vehemently defended it.
“So don’t come now and tell me otherwise. And that is why when the question was posed to Donna Cox asking why you justified it, the AG jumped in to stop, intervene and take the question,” Ragoonath contended.
Asked if anyone in the Cabinet would be held responsible for what transpired, Ragoonath was doubtful.
“This Government does not hold any of their members accountable, so I don’t expect anybody to be held accountable.”
Kamla wants AG’s head
Meanwhile, United National Congress leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, who first raised the issue at a political meeting on Monday, yesterday accused Government of being “broke” and suggested that attempts at cuts in pensions, increases in utility rates, fuel prices and property taxes were precursors to an IMF bailout.
Persad-Bissessar made the comment yesterday during a media briefing, where she raised further concerns about the alleged error by Armour.
“They have approached the banks for loans this month to fund the Government until March 2025 because they are broke,” Persad-Bissessar claimed.
“First Citizens and Republic Bank were averse to lending them because these banks were already exposed to large loans given to the Government. That is why the Government colluded with the Central Bank. On July 19, 2024, the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago reduced the primary reserve requirement for commercial banks from 14 per cent to 10 per cent of prescribed liabilities. Lowering the reserve requirement enabled the banks to free up funds to give credit to the Government.”
Persad-Bissessar also called for the AG’s dismissal over the pension fiasco, which she said, “added to his long list of outrageous and shameless lies.”
“I do not believe that a public servant is to blame, as I have outlined the process, the process has so many steps that it could have been picked up. It is incompetence, negligence on the part of the Government, if we believe that it is a mistake, but I do not believe it is a mistake and this is the fourth or fifth time the AG has blamed public servants. What should be the consequence, the AG should go, they should all go.” Persad-Bissessar also outlined the process by which a bill is introduced to Parliament.
“Before a bill can be laid in Parliament there is a detailed procedure to ensure that it reflects government policy. No public servant will get up on vaps and insert a clause that will disqualify elderly citizens with over 25,000 in savings from their hard-earned pension. Even if they did, the Government would have picked it up and changed it if this wasn’t part of their policy.”
She questioned how a proposed legislation which had been drafted since 2023 containing an alleged error was not picked up by the relevant parties and committee members.
“Were they all asleep at the Cabinet table? Is Rowley and Armour that incompetent, or are they simply backpedalling until they fall over and don’t know who to blame because they have been caught trying to pull a fast one?”
