An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­drea.perez-sobers@guardian.co.tt

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert says there are dis­cus­sions tak­ing place to raise lim­its on cred­it union death pay­outs, but notes the de­ci­sion has to come from Cab­i­net.

The pay­out now stands at $50,000.

The  Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T (CCULTT) re­cent­ly wrote to the Min­istry of Fi­nance Min­istry to raise the lim­it.

Speak­ing to the me­dia on Wednes­day, fol­low­ing the sod turn­ing of the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion (EBC) in St. Clair, Im­bert did con­firm he saw the let­ter and is meet­ing with his tech­nocrats and speak­ing to the Min­is­ter of Youth and De­vel­op­ment Fos­ter Cum­mings (CCULTT) as cred­it unions fall un­der his purview.  

“It was in­creased from $5,000 to $50,000 some time ago and that is the max­i­mum you can get when some­body dies. The min­is­ter and I have al­ready spo­ken in­for­mal­ly. We are think­ing of sug­gest­ing but it has to be a Cab­i­net de­ci­sion propos­ing a high­er fig­ure, so we are dis­cussing that,” Im­bert ex­plained.

Pressed fur­ther as to when this in­crease took place the min­is­ter said, “I did it in a bud­get some time ago.”

In a let­ter to the ed­i­tor two weeks ago Andy Jangeesingh ap­pealed to the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance to re­move the Re­stric­tive Lim­its on Cred­it Union Death Pay­outs.

He said cur­rent­ly, Sec­tion 40-41 of the Co-op­er­a­tive So­ci­eties Act, Chap. 81:03 im­pos­es re­stric­tive caps on the sums cred­it unions may dis­burse to ben­e­fi­cia­ries with­out re­quir­ing pro­bate or court ap­proval.  

“While well-in­ten­tioned, these lim­its im­pose un­due hard­ship on griev­ing fam­i­lies, un­der­mine the pur­pose of cred­it unions, and con­tra­dict the prin­ci­ples of eq­ui­ty in our fi­nan­cial sys­tem.”

He ar­gued that re­mov­ing the cap would grant im­me­di­ate re­lief to vul­ner­a­ble cit­i­zens when they need it most.

"T&T’s bank­ing sec­tor im­pos­es no such caps on ac­count pay­outs af­ter death, al­low­ing ben­e­fi­cia­ries to have seam­less ac­cess to funds. This dis­par­i­ty un­just­ly pe­nal­izes cred­it union mem­bers, of­ten from low or mid­dle-in­come house­holds, who re­ly on these in­sti­tu­tions for com­mu­ni­ty-cen­tric fi­nan­cial ser­vices,” he stat­ed.