Pensioners against electronic payment system – survey

The Social Protection Ministry (MoSP) plans to upgrade the present pension payment system to electronic, but might just have to ditch the idea because most pensioners are against the upgrade.
This was related to Guyana Times on Friday by a reliable source attached to the MoSP, who also informed that the decision to ditch the upgrade was arrived at after a survey had been conducted.
According to the source, the survey was conducted about three months ago by the Telecommunications Ministry, in collaboration with the Guyana Post Office Corporation (GPOC).
“Based on the reports from the survey, most of the pensioners did not want the upgrade,” the source informed.
This newspaper was further informed that despite the findings from the survey, talks are ongoing for an upgrade to the old age pension system.
The Government had first revealed its plan to introduce an electronic payment system for pensioners back in 2016. The intent of the system is to have pensioners uplift their monthly allocations through the local banks.
Assistant Chief Probation and Social Services Officer Ricardo Banwarie had explained back then that, in the upgraded system, pensioners would sign on the coupon booklet and access their cash. The pensioners’ information would be entered into the database for the GPOC to keep record of pensioners in the system.
“Added to that, we will be having the agents, for persons who are shut-ins, persons who are not capable of going to the Post Office to uplift their pensions. We will be able to have the names of the persons who are going to be authorised to uplift the pension on behalf of the pensioner in our data base,” Banwarie explained.
He clarified that this new system was intended not to scrap the coupon booklet system, but to run parallel with it. Banwarie added that if a pensioner has to relocate, he or she must inform the Post Office.
Then Social Protection Minister, Volda Lawrence, had told the National Assembly in 2016 that the new electronic payment system would be implemented in 2017.