Dear Editor,

Much has been written over the years by various individuals, including myself, about the very archaic system of tracking the legitimacy of pensioners to continue receiving pensions.

I urge the new minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister, Ambassador Audrey Marks, who has the responsibility to transform and digitalise, to make this a priority in the first couple months of her tenure.

Regardless of which party is elected in the general election later this year, this must be a priority. It is absurd in 2025 to ask ageing pensioners to verify that they are still alive with the use of quarterly Life Certificates which must be verified by a justice of peace or designated officer. The National Insurance Scheme (NIS) pension system should also be modernised for pensioners receiving social benefits.

Many pensioners are not mobile, some are incapacitated and live in remote areas. These certificates are mailed to pensioners and sent back, sometimes they are not received on time, resulting in delay in payments which pensioners rely on. Surely we can do better for seniors. As someone said not long ago, most pensioners and their families are law-abiding citizens not looking to defraud the system. Why should the mostly good suffer for the bad?

If a certificate is required, it should be annual, or a better way is to link the Tax Registration Number (TRN) to death certificates and the pensioner system managed by the Accountant General. The authorities will know immediately when someone dies and can follow up with a letter notifying the family that payments will end and next steps if there are legal issues related to beneficiaries.

The current system is also problematic for pensioners who now live overseas.

It was annouced last year that legislation was being passed to use a phone service to verify if a pensioner is alive. It was not stated whether these phone calls would have to be made quarterly. Yes, this might be easier for the pensioner than the current system, but surely it will be a cumbersome task for the administrators, in addition to a high risk for errors.

Using the mail system and administrators to manage will also be costly, and I imagine implementing several dedicated phone lines will be costly to administer. They will probably have two systems: a mail system and a phone system working simultaneously side by side.

A better option to minimise errors is to digitalise the system, and please do not suggest National Identification System (NIDS), which is an optional ID system, already delayed by several years and an ID system which we expect most will not bother to sign up for due to its flaws.

The pension system would not be difficult to fix if the various departments, including the Accountant General’s Department and Registrar General’s Department, can talk to each other digitally and electronically.

P Chin

chin_p@yahoo.com