RETIRED civil servants want the Government to set up a pensions review board to address what they said were “disparities and anomalies” in the current pensions system.

At the 37th annual general meeting of the Jamaica Government Pensioners’ Association (JGPA) held Saturday at Stephanie Hall in Kingston, the members endorsed a call by their president, Clinton Davis, for “the setting up of a pensions review board along the lines of the Government’s salaries review board so that there can be some standardisation of the system of pension payments to retired civil servants”.

Davis, claiming that “the disparities and anomalies are horrendous and immoral”, said that the JGPA was being swamped by complaints from retired teachers, police and other professionals. He said many of the problems stemmed from the fact that the pension systems applicable to one sector aredifferent from that of another.

Approximately 16,000 pensioners from central government, parish councils, the KSAC and some statutory corporations are represented by the JGPA.

“To make matters worse,” Davis noted, “those persons who retired before 1995 are currently at a serious disadvantage because of the rates applicable to them.”

The JGPA president added that the association had written to the finance minister about the discrepancies and had received his confirmation “in writing” that civil servants who retired before 1995 should be given “special case” consideration.

At Saturday’s meeting, hundreds of retired civil servants voiced their disgust at how the Government was treating them. They complained of meagre pensions, continued taxation of pensions and the little assistance being given to the association in finding adequate accommodation for its office. The meeting agreed that if the Government did not give an early, positive response to their requests, they would go the route of taking up signatures for a petition.

The meeting supported the president’s call for the Government to cease taxation on pensions paid to retired civil servants aged 75 years or more. They also called on the Jamaica Civil Service Association to give support to the efforts of government pensioners for a better deal because, as one JGPA member put it: “Today’s civil servants are tomorrow’s government pensioners and they will face the same hardships we face if things don’t change”.

The extent of the difficulties faced by pensioners was perhaps best expressed by one elderly JGPA member who lamented the fact that “sometimes we have to choose between buying medicine and buying food, and sometimes when we forego food to buy medicine we find out that the medicine should not be taken without food”.

The JGPA president also voiced his disapproval of “the inequity that exists in pension payments to parliamentarians as against civil servants, with members of parliament getting a superior package”. He said that he had made the appeal for greater equity at a meeting of the Parliamentary Salaries Review Committee chaired by Oliver Clarke.

Davis told members of the association that the JGPA’s Trust Fund, which was established “to assist those members who were in the most dire need” was still open for contributions and that the target was $3 million. The president said that the trust fund currently stood at just below $2 million and that when it got to the $3 million mark he would approach the finance minister for “matching funds” to set up the trust in perpetuity so that the income from the $6 million could be disbursed to needy members.

Davis told the meeting that “Finance Minister Omar Davis had indicated a willingness to give something to the trust fund” during their initial discussions on the matter.

The AGM was also addressed by Cecil White from the Ministry of Health who spoke about the Government’s recently-launched National Health Fund (NHF). He urged all JGPA members to register with the NHF so that they could benefit from the subsidy on prescription drugs used to treat 14 of the most common chronic diseases occurring in Jamaica.

One member of the JGPA pointed out to his colleagues that although they had Blue Cross health coverage, the NHF would be a useful addition that “would allow the Blue Cross coverage to spread further”, especially for members with multiple ailments.

Davis was re-elected unopposed to continue as president of the association, along with the first, second and third vice presidents — Donald Davidson, Sybil Thompson and Eugena McFarquhar, respectively. A new secretary is to be determined by the executive as no member volunteered for the post and Johnson Whyte replaced Albert Mowatt who had resigned as treasurer for health reasons.