Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Re­cip­i­ents of the Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion, Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance and Pub­lic As­sis­tance grants will con­tin­ue to be paid as the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices works to clear back­logs and ad­dress in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion that has caused mil­lions of dol­lars in wastage.

Work on the min­istry’s Port-of-Spain head of­fice has been halt­ed while the project, be­gun un­der the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, is re­viewed by the cur­rent UNC Gov­ern­ment.

Min­is­ter Van­dana Mo­hit gave the up­dates yes­ter­day dur­ing the Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee’s ex­am­i­na­tion of the 2027 Bud­get. The min­istry’s $5.1 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion was un­der re­view.

Mo­hit said the min­istry would pro­vide ad­di­tion­al sup­port to vul­ner­a­ble house­holds from Jan­u­ary 1, 2027. The $250 month­ly in­crease an­nounced in the Bud­get is ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit el­i­gi­ble ex­ist­ing and new re­cip­i­ents of all three grants.

Arou­ca/Mal­oney MP Camille Robin­son-Reg­is asked how the min­istry would fund the in­crease de­spite a low­er al­lo­ca­tion, whether el­i­gi­bil­i­ty rules would change, and how reg­u­lar pay­ments would be pro­tect­ed.

“No re­cip­i­ent will be af­fect­ed; all re­cip­i­ents will re­ceive their grants,” Mo­hit said.

She said the min­istry was ad­dress­ing in­ac­cu­rate in­for­ma­tion in the So­cial Wel­fare Di­vi­sion that had re­sult­ed in mil­lions of dol­lars in wastage, while work­ing to clear the back­log. The is­sues af­fect­ed all three grants.

Mo­hit said grant pay­ments were processed through a Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board sys­tem and the min­istry had not made late pay­ments. If chal­lenges arose, she said, the min­istry would work with the Fi­nance Min­istry to en­sure re­cip­i­ents were paid on time.

The min­istry has 118,121 Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion re­cip­i­ents, a fig­ure pro­ject­ed to rise to 124,000 as the back­log is cleared. The Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grant has 20,971 adult re­cip­i­ents and 4,539 mi­nors. Mo­hit said num­bers could rise as ap­pli­ca­tions are processed and fall as re­cip­i­ents die.

She said there were no pro­posed changes to el­i­gi­bil­i­ty cri­te­ria, al­though the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s Of­fice was re­view­ing leg­is­la­tion gov­ern­ing the min­istry. Ap­pli­ca­tions should be processed with­in 90 days, she said, but the ad­min­is­tra­tion could not guar­an­tee that time­frame as it worked to clear in­her­it­ed back­logs. About 38,000 pen­sion re­cip­i­ents still need to tran­si­tion to di­rect de­posits, which are re­quired for pen­sion pay­ments.

Head of­fice work halt­ed

Asked by Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Symon de No­bri­ga about the new head of­fice on Tra­garete Road, Mo­hit said the project had been moved out­side the min­istry’s purview and re­mained un­der ac­tive Cab­i­net re­view.

“From my un­der­stand­ing, con­struc­tion work isn’t on­go­ing at this point. The project is be­ing un­der­tak­en by Ude­cott. I’ll check if se­cu­ri­ty is in place,” she said.

De No­bri­ga asked how the $30 mil­lion al­lo­cat­ed for com­ple­tion and out­fit­ting would be spent. Mo­hit said de­tails would fol­low a site vis­it and prepa­ra­tion of a user brief.

When the Guardian vis­it­ed the blue, re­flec­tive-glass build­ing yes­ter­day, a crane was lift­ing slabs of ma­te­r­i­al. Two work­ers in blue uni­forms were out­side, but there were few oth­er vis­i­ble signs of ac­tiv­i­ty.

Dur­ing the pro­ceed­ings, Mo­hit was asked to apol­o­gise af­ter ask­ing De No­bri­ga whether he was “hard of hear­ing” when he sought clar­i­fi­ca­tion. She lat­er said she would rec­om­mend a “good ear doc­tor” to him.

De No­bri­ga re­mind­ed the Gov­ern­ment that the com­mit­tee’s ex­am­i­na­tion was in­tend­ed to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty.