Pensioners receiving monthly payments from the Social Security Scheme have
been assured that their payments are on time for the month of June.
According to the Director of the Scheme, David Matthias, last October, the scheme
received a lump sum payment from the government, enabling it to make on-time
payments to pensioners since then.
“With a lump sum payment from the government last year, we have remained on
track with payments. That is, the monies are sent to the financial institutions on the
last Monday of the month in which they are due. If you follow that trend, the June
payments are due on Monday (today) and we expect to be sending out the
payments on that date which keeps us current,” Mathias said during an appearance,
on Saturday, on the Browne and Browne show on Point FM.
He, however, noted that there has been an issue with bringing newly qualified
persons into the scheme in a timely manner. He said there are several reasons for
this.
“During the period of COVID, because we had limited staff and could not bring
people in for face-to-face interviews, we built up quite a backlog and a delay in the
processing. We currently have over two hundred persons who are waiting to be
added to the scheme,” he reported.
He said the scheme has been working feverishly to resolve the outstanding issues
and to have the backlog cleared this year.
Part of the challenges, he noted, has been a difficulty with the software system to
make the adjustments based on the number of people who had opted for early
retirement. This was compounded by insufficient staff to properly process the
sheer number of people.
He gave further assurances that these matters are being attended to and pensioners
can now expect the bottlenecks to be resolved by October, the latest.
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