The Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Cor­po­ra­tion says it will be­gin de­liv­er­ing more than 51,000 so­cial wel­fare cheques to­day, af­ter it re­ceived them from the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices yes­ter­day.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Gre­go­ry Alex­is told Guardian Me­dia that the cheques, which in­clude food sup­port, dis­abil­i­ty grants, mi­nor grants and se­nior cit­i­zens’ pen­sions for the month of Oc­to­ber, were hand­ed over around 9.25 am yes­ter­day.

“We’ve start­ed our process to ver­i­fy, sort, and ac­count for every cheque,” Alex­is said.

The cheques were sup­posed to be de­liv­ered in time for Oc­to­ber 1.

Alex­is ex­plained that TTPost’s in­ter­nal checks were ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed yes­ter­day evening, af­ter which the cheques will be dis­patched to the com­pa­ny’s 76 of­fices across Trinidad and To­ba­go be­gin­ning ear­ly to­day.

TTPost said it is aim­ing for some de­liv­er­ies to start by this af­ter­noon.
The Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices ex­plained that the de­lay in dis­tri­b­u­tion stemmed from tech­ni­cal is­sues with the cheque-print­ing equip­ment at the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NIBTT) in late Sep­tem­ber.

A mal­func­tion dis­rupt­ed the prepa­ra­tion of cheques for sev­er­al so­cial as­sis­tance pro­grammes, in­clud­ing Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion, Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance, Pub­lic As­sis­tance Grants, and Food Sup­port.
It said a re­place­ment part ini­tial­ly de­liv­ered on Sep­tem­ber 30 was in­com­pat­i­ble, ne­ces­si­tat­ing a new part sourced over­seas, which was in­stalled by Oc­to­ber 2, restor­ing full func­tion­al­i­ty.

The min­istry stat­ed that pay­ments made via di­rect de­posit were un­af­fect­ed and en­cour­aged ben­e­fi­cia­ries to en­rol for di­rect de­posit to avoid fu­ture de­lays.

Af­ter the cheques were print­ed, the min­istry said TTPost re­ceived the cheques yes­ter­day and be­gan the process of sort­ing, ver­i­fy­ing, and prepar­ing them for dis­tri­b­u­tion.

- Ot­to Car­ring­ton