– PAC member chides ministry reps for illegal action, flimsy excuses
Recent instances of old age pension books being issued with no one signing for them, in order to ensure accountability, have come to the attention of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC).
According to PAC member parliamentarian Juan Edghill, it is an illegal act to be
PAC member Juan Edghill
issuing pension books and not collecting signatures. However, he stated that a representative of the ministry has admitted that employees of the ministry did just that, during the PAC’s latest meeting.
“That was an admission made at the PAC by the accounting officer at the Ministry of Social Protection — that there are pension books that were issued (for which) no signatures could be found,” Edghill stated in a recent interview.
It is understood that upon being pressed by the PAC for an explanation, representatives of the ministry stated that a crowd crisis at the distribution point caused the books to be issued without being signed for.
“It is an illegal issue,” Edghill affirmed. “And the explanation they gave was that there was a crowd crisis. So people collected the books without signing. It’s not plausible, it’s not acceptable and it can’t stand the scrutiny.
“Because if you have a crowd crisis, what you have to do is control your crowd and continue,” the former Junior Finance Minister said. “But you can’t just be passing out books to people and they’re not signing (for them).”
While in opposition, the coalition had claimed that the People’s Progressive Party
Amna Ally now heads the Social Protection Ministry
had inflated the list of pensioners by thousands. The parties had claimed that investigations and a study were done. However, demands to produce this evidence were never met by the coalition; and today, the number of old age pensioners has risen.
A forensic audit had been launched into the Old Age Pension Scheme subsequently revealing that the previous Ministry of Social Protection was not being accountable for the distribution process of pension books.
This was the finding of auditor Leslie Veerasammy of Nizam Ali and Company. The audit covered the period January 1, 2015 to May 31, 2015. When it was completed, there were a number of recommendations to improve the system.
During the probe, Veerasammy said it was found that “there was no proper accountability for the 50,500 OAP books printed for 2015, as reconciliation is not maintained between books printed versus books used.”
It has been noted that the total amount of eligible pensioners as recorded in the pension database stood at 45,262 at the beginning of 2015 during January 1, 2015 to May 31, 2015, and there were 2301 additions and 587 removals. Therefore, the total amount of eligible pensioners as per the database at May 31, 2015 was 46,976.
Moreover, during the investigation, it was found that some 27 instances were found where persons collecting the pension books were not the eligible pensioners. The auditor stated that attempts were made to confirm the existence of these persons by contacting them, but the exercise was unsuccessful.
Furthermore, the probe highlighted instances when pension books were distributed in hinterland areas through the Toshaos or Village Councillors; hence there is no need for pensioners to sign the prescribed distribution sheet when uplifting their books. This, Veerasammy explained, opens room for misconduct.
The auditor had recommended that the ministry provide a detailed reconciliation of all OAP books for 2015, including the number of books printed, number of books issued to social workers, number of books returned by social workers, damaged books, and number of books on hand.He also made a recommendation for a monthly reconciliation to be done. It is not clear whether a monthly reconciliation system was indeed implemented in keeping with this advice. Last year, the Government had announced that an automatic distribution system for old age pension would be introduced by January 2017. As part of the new system, the ministry had announced that pensioners would be required to have the new National Identification Card, rather than the nine-digit ones formerly used.
