RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul says a re-elect­ed PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion may in­crease the Se­nior Cit­i­zens' Grant once there is fis­cal space.

He al­so said pay­ments to school clean­ers and school maxi taxi con­ces­sion­aires will be processed more quick­ly un­der his lead­er­ship.

Dhan­paul gave the as­sur­ance while speak­ing to the me­dia, fol­low­ing the open­ing of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB) head­quar­ters at La­dy Hailes Av­enue, San Fer­nan­do, on Thurs­day, where he was asked to ad­dress con­cerns raised on the cam­paign trail.

On the is­sue of pen­sions, Dhan­paul stat­ed that the Se­nior Cit­i­zens' Grant will re­main un­changed, and if any ad­just­ment is made, it will be up­ward.

"There will be no ad­just­ment, no in­ter­fer­ence, I should say. Like when they see the se­nior cit­i­zens' grant, there will be ab­solute­ly no in­ter­fer­ence to the se­nior cit­i­zens' grant. The on­ly thing will be an up­ward ad­just­ment," he said.

Dhan­paul added that de­tails about the pen­sion plan will be out­lined in the next na­tion­al bud­get.

"In the next bud­get, I will out­line all the plans of the gov­ern­ment to take that be­yond the 50 years, as I men­tioned," he said.

He al­so stat­ed that the pro­posed changes would de­pend on avail­able rev­enue.

"Once the fis­cal al­lows, we will ad­just up­wards de­pend­ing on the type of fis­cal space that we have," he added.

Dhan­paul not­ed that not every­one qual­i­fies for the grant.

"Not every­one turn­ing 65 could get the se­nior cit­i­zens' pen­sion. Not every­one turn­ing 65 could get that. Ob­vi­ous­ly, it has to be means-test­ed. But you don't want mil­lion­aires get­ting a se­nior cit­i­zens' grant," he said.

Asked whether funds to pay school maxi taxi dri­vers and school clean­ers will be re­leased on time, he said there will be quick­er dis­burse­ment of funds un­der his watch.

Mean­while, NIB chair­man Patrick Fer­reira told the me­dia that the NIB has start­ed go­ing af­ter em­ploy­ers who do not pay con­tri­bu­tions for their work­ers.

He said the NIB is fol­low­ing le­gal pro­ce­dures to ad­dress cas­es of non-pay­ment.

"We know we have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to the em­ploy­ees, so we stand by our re­spon­si­bil­i­ties, but we al­so are go­ing af­ter the er­rant em­ploy­ees, to the full ex­tent of the law, you know, there are laws that... There's a process and we are fol­low­ing the process," he said.

Fer­reira said a toll-free num­ber is avail­able for re­ports and that field op­er­a­tions have in­creased.

"We have start­ed that process, we have strength­ened the de­part­ment, so we are now on the field, so we will see the re­sults com­ing for­ward," he added.

He said the board's dig­i­tal sys­tem will al­low con­trib­u­tors to see their pay­ment records in re­al time.

When asked if any com­pa­nies had been pros­e­cut­ed, Fer­reira said the process was on­go­ing.

"We have fol­lowed the law, so we have a num­ber of mat­ters in court, so it's a process and we fol­low the process," he said.

Dur­ing the cam­paign trail, UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has re­peat­ed­ly raised con­cerns about the gov­ern­ment de­priv­ing peo­ple of the Se­nior Cit­i­zens' Grant. She raised con­cerns about pro­posed changes to the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria for the Se­nior Cit­i­zens' Pen­sion, say­ing a clause in the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion and Pub­lic As­sis­tance) Bill, 2024, would dis­qual­i­fy in­di­vid­u­als with more than $25,000 in bank sav­ings from re­ceiv­ing the pen­sion.