Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Over two years af­ter his $40,000 lump sum pen­sion cheque was fraud­u­lent­ly cashed with­out his knowl­edge, a 70-year-old se­nior cit­i­zen has re­ceived his out­stand­ing pay­ment.

The Of­fice of the Om­buds­man an­nounced the pos­i­tive out­come for the man in a press re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day.

Ac­cord­ing to the re­lease, in Oc­to­ber 2022, the then-Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices ap­proved his ap­pli­ca­tion for the month­ly grant.

The man was ex­pect­ed to re­ceive retroac­tive pen­sion pay­ments from Au­gust 2021, as it took al­most 14 months to process his ap­pli­ca­tion.

When he did not re­ceive the pay­ment and vis­it­ed the min­istry, of­fi­cials told him that his cheque had al­ready been cashed at a su­per­mar­ket.

The man de­nied the claim and made a re­port to the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice (TTPS)’s Fraud Squad.

He even­tu­al­ly lodged a for­mal com­plaint with the Om­buds­man’s Of­fice in June last year af­ter the min­istry failed to ad­dress the is­sue by mak­ing the pay­ment to him.

Om­buds­man Jacqui Samp­son Meiguel probed the com­plaint and pro­duced a re­port, which was laid in Par­lia­ment on June 18.

The re­lease said that the re­port not­ed that the man’s ex­pe­ri­ence high­light­ed un­due de­lay by the min­istry, which has since been re­clas­si­fied as the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices, in ad­dress­ing pen­sion cheque fraud.

“In her re­port, the Om­buds­man not­ed that this case re­flect­ed a broad­er and con­cern­ing pat­tern in which pub­lic agen­cies fail to act with ap­pro­pri­ate ur­gency, even when a clear path to res­o­lu­tion ex­ists,” it said.

“In many such cas­es, mean­ing­ful progress is on­ly made when the Om­buds­man in­ter­venes, and even then, sus­tained fol­low-up is of­ten re­quired, in­clud­ing the use of con­sti­tu­tion­al pow­ers to ob­tain records or sum­mon of­fi­cials,” it added.

It said that the mat­ter was fi­nal­ly re­solved last Thurs­day when the man was in­formed that a sub­sti­tute cheque was ready for col­lec­tion.

The re­lease com­mend­ed the min­istry for tak­ing ac­tion and sug­gest­ed that clear poli­cies and pro­ce­dures be de­vel­oped to man­age such in­ci­dents of fraud bet­ter and en­sure time­ly re­dress.

“The Of­fice of the Om­buds­man of T&T re­mains com­mit­ted to pro­mot­ing fair, trans­par­ent, and ac­count­able pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion for all cit­i­zens,” it said.