Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

As of Thurs­day, peo­ple were no longer able to cash pub­lic as­sis­tance grants and se­nior cit­i­zens’ pen­sion cheques ex­ceed­ing $3,500 at su­per­mar­kets, gro­ceries and shops through­out T&T.

They now have to use the banks for that.

This was an­nounced yes­ter­day by the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry.

In a state­ment, the Min­istry con­firmed that an amend­ment was made to the Pub­lic As­sis­tance and Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion Acts. These al­so per­tain to the Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion (Amend­ment) Reg­u­la­tions and the Pub­lic As­sis­tance (Amend­ment) Reg­u­la­tion, 2024.

The Min­istry stat­ed, “These Reg­u­la­tions were amend­ed to lim­it the en­cash­ment of all Pub­lic As­sis­tance Grant and Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion cheques ex­ceed­ing the val­ue of $3,500 at su­per­mar­kets, gro­ceries and shops through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go with ef­fect from 18th Ju­ly, 2024.

“This mea­sure seeks to de­ter fraud­u­lent ac­tiv­i­ties, mit­i­gate risks and re­duce fi­nan­cial loss­es to the Trea­sury.”

The Min­istry stat­ed that grant cheques ex­ceed­ing the sum of $3,500 must be en­cashed at banks or oth­er ap­proved fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions. This is be­cause they are legal­ly bound to utilise strin­gent ver­i­fi­ca­tion mea­sures to en­sure the va­lid­i­ty of cheques and ben­e­fi­cia­ries be­fore pay­ment.

The Min­istry stat­ed that re­cip­i­ents who ac­cess these grants via the “Di­rect De­posit” sys­tem will not be af­fect­ed by this mea­sure.

The Min­istry added, “The amend­ments to the Reg­u­la­tions seek to en­sure that al­lo­cat­ed funds are ef­fi­cient­ly and ef­fec­tive­ly ad­min­is­tered to whom they are in­tend­ed, name­ly the poor and vul­ner­a­ble.

“The Min­istry as­sures that every step is be­ing tak­en to en­sure that Pub­lic As­sis­tance Grant and Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion reach those house­holds who are tru­ly in need, align­ing with its com­mit­ment to help­ing, em­pow­er­ing and trans­form­ing lives.”

Dur­ing a re­cent de­bate on the Whistle­blow­er Pro­tec­tion Bill, So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox re­vealed how the bill might as­sist in deal­ing with is­sues plagu­ing the grant and pen­sion sys­tem.

She de­tailed cas­es of fraud­u­lent ap­pli­ca­tion, mis­al­lo­ca­tion of funds, cashed or re­deemed at par­tic­u­lar gro­ceries, in­ap­pro­pri­ate use of grant funds—some busi­ness­es al­low­ing peo­ple to buy al­co­hol and cig­a­rettes with grants—cor­rup­tion, nepo­tism, bribery and da­ta ma­nip­u­la­tion. 

Cox said in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­main on­go­ing for both the Min­istry’s In­ves­ti­ga­tions and Com­pli­ance Unit and the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.