Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she is wary of Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent de­ci­sion to with­draw the con­tentious Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion and Pub­lic As­sis­tance) Bill, 2024.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour yes­ter­day re­vealed the Gov­ern­ment was with­draw­ing the bill and would re­turn to the House with a new one, af­ter ad­mit­ting the con­tro­ver­sial clause which pro­posed to dis­qual­i­fy pen­sion­ers who had more than $25,000 in sav­ings in their banks ac­counts from ac­cess­ing the grant was an er­ror.

There was pub­lic up­roar af­ter Guardian Me­dia re­port­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s con­cern about the move dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Mon­day evening.

Yes­ter­day, af­ter she signed the con­do­lence book for de­ceased D’Abadie/O’Meara MP Lisa Mor­ris-Ju­lian at the Ro­tun­da of the Red House, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she will con­tin­ue to ex­pose the Gov­ern­ment but cau­tioned cit­i­zens to be on guard.

“This bill was laid in this House on the 9th of De­cem­ber, to­day is the 18th, so how many days ago was that and they now dis­cov­er an er­ror. Okay, he was out the coun­try, was the min­is­ter al­so out of the coun­try, Min­is­ter Cox, the bill is laid in her name. As far as I re­mem­ber, she was here so why is he try­ing to fool us. You know what is go­ing on with this, they say they will with­draw but you know what they want to do, just as they do with the prop­er­ty tax, elec­tric­i­ty rates, wa­ter rates, all the util­i­ties, win elec­tion and then come back and drop it on the peo­ple. I claim vic­to­ry to­day.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that if she did not re­veal the in­for­ma­tion sur­round­ing the se­nior cit­i­zens’ pen­sion, the pop­u­la­tion would have been left in the dark.

“None was the wis­er be­cause they thought come like a thief in the night, lay it last Mon­day, ad­journ the House for a date to be fixed, bring Christ­mas greet­ings, mean­ing that we not com­ing back to the House for the rest of the year, so they were like a thief in the night and they will con­tin­ue to do so.”

The se­nior cit­i­zens’ pen­sion ap­pli­ca­tion process cur­rent­ly re­quires bank de­tail sub­mis­sions, but there is no lim­it on the amount of mon­ey an ap­pli­cant can have in their ac­counts.