SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices is haem­or­rhag­ing mil­lions of dol­lars in an ap­par­ent scheme be­ing op­er­at­ed by some em­ploy­ees who are said to be re­ceiv­ing huge kick­backs and bribes to fast-track so­cial grants ap­pli­ca­tions that have been stuck in the sys­tem for months.

This was re­vealed by Don­na Cox, Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, days af­ter the 2021 Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port ex­posed in­con­sis­ten­cies and ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties that have re­sult­ed in state grants meant to as­sist the needy and vul­ner­a­ble go­ing in­to the wrong hands.

The re­port showed that peo­ple as young as 27 are col­lect­ing se­nior cit­i­zen pen­sions, food card ben­e­fi­cia­ries ob­tain­ing dou­ble pay­ments, per­ti­nent in­for­ma­tion for the pro­cess­ing of grants miss­ing from the min­istry’s data­base, and a pay­out of $886,350 to 61 ben­e­fi­cia­ries whose na­tion­al IDs did not cor­re­spond with their date of birth and four cen­te­nar­i­ans be­tween the ages 114 to 135 ap­pear­ing on the sys­tem.

In an in­ter­view at her St Vin­cent Street, Port-of-Spain of­fice on Fri­day, Cox said be­fore the re­port was made pub­lic, her min­istry had re­quest­ed an au­dit af­ter prob­lems were en­coun­tered with the pro­cess­ing of grants. It is now the sub­ject of an in­ves­ti­ga­tion by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice and an In­ves­ti­ga­tion and Com­pli­ance Unit (ICU) was re­cent­ly es­tab­lished to “en­sure there is no at­tempt in­ter­nal­ly and ex­ter­nal­ly to de­fraud the min­istry in the grant pay­ments.”

The ICU com­pris­es 11 in­ves­ti­ga­tors, com­pli­ance of­fi­cers, cy­ber­crime ex­perts, qual­i­ty as­sur­ance of­fi­cers, fi­nan­cial an­a­lysts and at­tor­neys.

While many of the alarm­ing is­sues stemmed from hu­man er­ror, lack of due dili­gence, checks and bal­ances and ac­count­abil­i­ty on the min­istry’s end, Cox said mea­sures have al­ready been put in place to ad­dress the trou­bling is­sue. She ad­mit­ted the min­istry has al­so been op­er­at­ing with an old da­ta sys­tem that was rid­dled with flaws, risks and gaps which some peo­ple were aware of.

Most of the in­con­sis­ten­cies dis­cov­ered by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al are as­so­ci­at­ed with da­ta loaded be­fore Oc­to­ber 2019, Cox said.

“It is clear it is a mix­ture of hu­man er­ror and cor­rup­tion. I am not here to make any ex­cus­es, many of these er­rors seem to be hu­man er­rors as­so­ci­at­ed with in­putting the da­ta, but there are oth­ers which seem to sug­gest that there may be il­le­gal trans­ac­tions with­in the sys­tem. I use the word cor­rup­tion be­cause there is cor­rup­tion. There is an el­e­ment of cor­rup­tion. It is not just hu­man er­ror,” she said.

“This is very dis­turb­ing be­cause they re­mind us of the gaps in the sys­tem that can be ex­ploit­ed by the crim­i­nal el­e­ment and which we need to close as a mat­ter of ur­gency.”

One area of cor­rup­tion dis­cov­ered was cheques is­sued to dead peo­ple be­ing cashed. These cheques were re­turned to the min­istry by the fam­i­lies of the dead clients.

“And some of that was tak­ing place . . . it could not have been ex­ter­nal per­sons. It must have been per­sons in­ter­nal­ly. The min­istry has not been do­ing what is sup­posed to do. I can’t on­ly blame the peo­ple. There are some vul­ner­a­ble peo­ple who should be on the sys­tem and are not on.”

Cox said such en­cash­ments amount­ed to fraud and cor­rup­tion and the min­istry has put in a place a Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion Unit to deal with such cheques.

On the mat­ter of 27-year-olds qual­i­fy­ing for Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion (SCP) grants, Cox said this was at­trib­uted to hu­man er­ror and is un­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

“The 21 per­sons who are be­low pen­sion­able age and are re­ceiv­ing the SCP grants are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the ICU. You have to un­der­stand be­cause of the flaws in the sys­tem and prob­lems with the pro­cess­ing and so on per­sons would find ways to beat the sys­tem. These peo­ple will have to suf­fer the con­se­quences of their ac­tions based on the out­come of these in­ves­ti­ga­tions.”

The min­is­ter was un­able to con­firm ex­act­ly how much mon­ey the min­istry was de­fraud­ed but said the po­lice will treat with those fraud­u­lent mat­ters “from what may pos­si­bly be or­gan­ised crime.” She said such gaps “can be ex­ploit­ed by crim­i­nal el­e­ments.”

Asked if there was an or­gan­ised ring with­in her min­istry with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of grants, Cox said: “I can­not to­tal­ly con­firm it but there are a lot of el­e­ments point­ing to that. There could be.”

It was al­so found that grants were giv­en to un­de­serv­ing peo­ple. Cox ad­mit­ted this was not a new de­vel­op­ment.

“It’s like a crim­i­nal en­ter­prise en­trenched. This is a num­ber of years. It is not now.”

She said this both­ers her to no end and caus­es her sleep­less nights.

“In the min­istry, there are su­per­vi­sors at every lev­el and we feel that peo­ple weren’t be­ing su­per­vised prop­er­ly.”

Ac­tion is now be­ing tak­en against delin­quent su­per­vi­sors for fail­ing to act against wrong­do­ers, while some em­ploy­ees have left the job. In go­ing for­ward, Cox said staff must be trained and re­trained.

“It is very dif­fi­cult to pin­point any­one based on how the process was lax, as to who did what. These are things that have been hap­pen­ing for a while. It’s a cul­ture. Per­sons would know how to cov­er up, per­sons would know how to not say cer­tain things,” she said.

Files of clients who have been ben­e­fi­cia­ries of more than one grant have al­so mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­ap­peared.

“I don’t know if that was de­lib­er­ate­ly done so that you would not be able to pin­point cer­tain per­sons,” Cox said.

“We have al­so had in­stances where there is a query . . . a file goes miss­ing, so who is to be held ac­count­able be­cause that file might con­tain the in­for­ma­tion as to the per­son who may be such as the case­work­er or the per­son who might have been the first point of con­tact for some­one who comes in­to the of­fice.”

As the min­istry un­der­takes a “clean up ex­er­cise” they have al­so im­ple­ment­ed a da­ta ver­i­fi­ca­tion sys­tem which is be­ing in­te­grat­ed in­to a mod­ern digi­tised sys­tem. The TTPS has con­duct­ed in­ter­views with some staff mem­bers who have been un­co­op­er­a­tive, Cox said.

The min­is­ter said she has re­ceived in­for­ma­tion that clients who have been wait­ing months for their so­cial ser­vices grants were ap­proached by staff mem­bers who promised to fast-track their ap­pli­ca­tions for kick­backs and bribes. Some clients re­ceive retroac­tive pay­ments of over $100,000.

“You meet peo­ple and they just talk. I have seen peo­ple al­lude to it on Face­book and men­tioned that we need to look at cer­tain ar­eas be­cause there are peo­ple who are tak­ing bribes or there are peo­ple who are ask­ing for mon­ey so they can fast track the ap­pli­ca­tions,” she said.

In an­oth­er ex­plo­sive and shock­ing rev­e­la­tion, Cox said they sus­pect “as much as 5,000 per­sons” liv­ing abroad are re­ceiv­ing SCP and oth­er grants. There are 104,000 SCP re­cip­i­ents each of whom re­ceives a $3,500 month­ly pay­ment.

She es­ti­mat­ed the month­ly pay­out to the 5,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries at “$50 mil­lion that we may be los­ing based on that.” The min­istry dis­trib­utes more than $4 bil­lion in grants an­nu­al­ly.

Cox said the min­istry will soon sign an MOU with Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion to put an end to these il­le­gal trans­ac­tions.

She said peo­ple have been re­ceiv­ing the grants be­cause of a work­er turn­ing a blind eye or peo­ple fly­ing in­to the coun­try on the an­niver­sary of their birth­days which is the time the min­istry would re­quest a fol­low-up in­ter­view.

“So, many peo­ple may not come for­ward now. The word is out that when you come in­to us, we are now ask­ing for your pass­port in­for­ma­tion again. So, we have start­ed do­ing that to help cut the cost down to re­duce the bur­den placed on tax­pay­ers. When we sign that MOU we will have ac­cess to any­one who we have a sus­pi­cion on… that we can ask for the in­for­ma­tion from Im­mi­gra­tion Di­vi­sion as to their trav­el pat­tern. Once we con­firm this we will take them off the sys­tem or de­cide if they will be pros­e­cut­ed.”

Cox said, she re­cent­ly found out that some­one who has been re­ceiv­ing a dis­abil­i­ty grant has been liv­ing abroad for the past four years.

“This is one case which a fam­i­ly mem­ber re­port­ed. A num­ber of peo­ple re­ceiv­ing dis­abil­i­ties are gain­ful­ly em­ployed. The min­istry al­so has to take some re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for that be­cause we are sup­posed to con­duct an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to these re­cip­i­ents every six months which we have not been do­ing.

“It is clear peo­ple are steal­ing from the poor and whether it is per­sons who are staff mem­bers or per­sons on the out­side I want the law to take its course. I would like to see them brought to jus­tice,” the min­is­ter said.