CHARLES KONG SOO

Some of the 1,836 so­cial wel­fare cheques stolen from the San­gre Grande Post Of­fice on Jan­u­ary 1 have been cashed fraud­u­lent­ly at su­per­mar­kets.

So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox said the min­istry is mon­i­tor­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

“There are some su­per­mar­kets re­peat­ed­ly we’re see­ing where cheques are cashed there, per­sons’ cheques that are lost or turn­ing up cashed at cer­tain su­per­mar­kets and their names are pop­ping up fre­quent­ly.

“It makes you won­der what is re­al­ly hap­pen­ing, why this is hap­pen­ing in some su­per­mar­kets and not at oth­ers,” she told Guardian Me­dia.

She said this meant that some su­per­mar­kets are not tak­ing strin­gent mea­sures to ex­am­ine iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards to cor­re­late with cheques which will be ho­n­oured by the Cen­tral Bank.

She ap­pealed to su­per­mar­kets to be more vig­i­lant al­so be­cause grant re­cip­i­ents are be­ing neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed.

Cox ex­plained that when cheques are lost or stolen and the min­istry has to re­place them, this is an ex­tra ex­pen­di­ture on the pub­lic purse.

Fol­low­ing the theft of the $7 mil­lion worth of grants and se­nior cit­i­zens’ pen­sion cheques, mea­sures have been tak­en to re­cov­er the stolen cheques and is­sue re­place­ments.

Cox said the min­istry was in­formed that a break-in was at­tempt­ed at the TTPost out­let in St James and her min­istry had been li­ais­ing with the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and TTPost on se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments to pre­vent such in­ci­dents in the fu­ture.

They are crack­ing down on the cash­ing of so­cial wel­fare cheques by unau­tho­rised busi­ness­es. The min­istry has tem­porar­i­ly put a stop to the en­cash­ment cheques dat­ed Feb­ru­ary 1 at su­per­mar­kets and oth­er re­tail es­tab­lish­ments.

Re­ports of fraud­u­lent con­ver­sion of so­cial wel­fare cheques by in­di­vid­u­als and busi­ness­es are be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by the po­lice and the min­istry is work­ing close­ly with the Cen­tral Bank, Comp­trol­ler of Ac­counts and the In­land Rev­enue Di­vi­sion.

The min­istry is al­so con­tin­u­ing its col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Bankers’ As­so­ci­a­tion to en­sure ease of do­ing busi­ness for all of its clients.

Cox ad­vised so­cial wel­fare ben­e­fi­cia­ries to call the min­istry’s hot­line num­ber at 800-1MSD (800–1673) or vis­it the so­cial wel­fare of­fice in their re­gion for fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the di­rect de­posit ini­tia­tive or vis­it www.so­cial.gov.tt to down­load a form and ap­ply.