Melis­sa Doughty

Many food card­hold­ers be­lieved when their ac­counts were cred­it­ed with ex­tra cash last month, it was a gift from the Gov­ern­ment in cel­e­bra­tion of the coun­try's 50th an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence. Mary Charles (not her re­al name), of Bel Air Road, Ma­yaro, said yes­ter­day in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian her moth­er was among those count­ing their lucky stars. Charles said oth­er peo­ple in her moth­er's neigh­bour­hood shared that be­lief.

She said her moth­er, who usu­al­ly re­ceives $410, in­stead re­ceived $820 and spent over $600 when she went to the su­per­mar­ket. "She got a dou­ble-up. She did not use all be­cause she thought it was an In­de­pen­dence thing. Oth­er peo­ple from the area al­so thought it was an In­de­pen­dence thing. "She didn't use all and by the time she went back there was noth­ing on the card. Her neigh­bours by the time they went to check said there was noth­ing and the bal­ance said there was a sys­tem er­ror," she said.

The Min­is­ter of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, Dr Glenn Ra­mad­hars­ingh, held an im­promp­tu press con­fer­ence on Mon­day to ad­dress the is­sue. He said 6,000 card-hold­ers had re­ceived dou­ble the usu­al amount on Sat­ur­day which cost the State an ad­di­tion­al $2 mil­lion. He de­scribed the ex­tra mon­ey as "an ad­vance pay­ment." The card is of­fi­cial­ly known as the Con­di­tion­al Cash Trans­fer Pro­gramme (CCTP) card.

Asked why her moth­er didn't re­port it, Charles said: "Be­cause she thought it was a gift." Lar­ry Nath, act­ing group CEO of First Cit­i­zens, the bank in­volved in the trans­ac­tions, said in a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day the bank had worked night and day for the past 48 hours to solve the prob­lem. He apol­o­gised for the er­ror, say­ing the agree­ment be­tween First Cit­i­zens and the min­istry was a tri­par­tite one.

The third par­ty, whom Nath did not name, was re­spon­si­ble for the er­ror, in which the provider paid one month's pay­ment twice. The provider, he said, caught 15-16 per cent of the over­pay­ments but the oth­ers were not caught. While not ex­cus­ing what oc­curred, Nath said the in­ci­dent was a one-off oc­cur­rence in over two mil­lion trans­ac­tions since the pro­gramme be­gan in 2006. "I am sor­ry for any in­con­ve­nience caused to the min­istry, the card­hold­ers and all stake­hold­ers in­volved," Nath added.

Asked if the ser­vice provider would be ter­mi­nat­ed for its er­ror, Nath said it was pre­ma­ture as the provider was work­ing with First Cit­i­zens and the min­istry to solve the prob­lem. Nath al­so said card­hold­ers had called the min­istry to re­port the er­ror. First Cit­i­zens said in a me­dia re­lease yes­ter­day it was the first time since the launch of the pro­gramme an er­ror in pay­ment had oc­curred.

It added: "First Cit­i­zens re­it­er­ates its com­mit­ment to work close­ly with the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment, the third par­ty (where the over­pay­ment orig­i­nat­ed) and all nec­es­sary stake­hold­ers to rec­ti­fy the po­si­tion with re­gard to hold­ers of the Food/Smart Card and to en­sure there is no re­cur­rence of these cir­cum­stances in the fu­ture." The card pro­vides a month­ly cash amount, based on the size of a ben­e­fi­cia­ry's fam­i­ly:

• Fam­i­lies with three mem­bers or few­er re­ceive $300 a month;

• fam­i­lies with four to five mem­bers re­ceive $400 a month; and

• fam­i­lies with six or more mem­bers re­ceive $500 a month.