GOVERNMENT has been left with more than just egg on its face after bungling the question of a $25,000 savings cap for pensioners.
Its recent actions and purported explanations have needlessly antagonised the population, shaken confidence in the future of hundreds of thousands of pensions, and created an image of an error-prone administration. Only recently did a minister give wrong overrun figures relating to an airport project and admitted to inaccurate Treasury revenues.
Speaking volumes is the inauspicious way the Senior Citizens’ Pension and Public Assistance Bill, 2024, was introduced to the country.
On December 9, the House of Representatives was about to adjourn after discussions on Tobago autonomy and the Elections and Boundaries Commission. Then the clerk announced a bill.
The legislation, which would have normally been introduced earlier in the sitting, did not appear on the order paper. Nor did it appear on the supplemental order paper. Unusually, it appeared on a second supplemental order paper.
The bill was announced. Christmas greetings were aired amid good cheer. The House adjourned.
However, about a week later, after Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar raised the issue, Attorney General Reginald Armour was announcing, at a hastily called press conference on December 18, that the bill would be “withdrawn.”
The requirement that somebody could get a pension only if they had less than $25,000 was, he said, “inserted” by “someone in the public service.”
Was this the same gremlin who “disappeared” a case file in Armour's office, we wonder?
In Mr Armour’s tale, the draft bill was considered by the Legislative Review Committee, the Finance and General Purposes Committee, and the Cabinet – none noticed the odious provision.
The Prime Minister this week said, “All of this was news to me.”
At least Dr Rowley and Mr Armour have the tenuous excuse that they were out of the country when the Cabinet approved the legislation on November 21. Stuart Young was acting PM. Camille Robinson-Regis was acting AG.
Yet, the relevant clause is on page five of the bill given to all MPs this month. One does not need to be senior counsel to see it.
And the very first page of the explanatory note sets out the new criterion of “having savings not exceeding $25,000.”
So the country is left with two possibilities. Either these officials introduced a proposal to change pensions by accident, or the Cabinet wished, all along, to do so with little fanfare.
The first strains credulity and paints a picture of eye-watering incompetence. It also damages the prospect of meaningful reform, which is needed.
The second undermines trust in government officials who are increasing their own pay while apparently expecting pensioners to live on $25,000.
There is no good way to view this embarrassing affair.
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