Less than 24 hours af­ter it be­came head­line news in the T&T Guardian news­pa­per, Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day with­drew a bill that, if passed in­to law, would have es­sen­tial­ly dis­qual­i­fied se­nior cit­i­zens in this coun­try from re­ceiv­ing an old age pen­sion, based on them hav­ing more than $25,000 in their bank ac­counts.

The mat­ter was first raised by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Mon­day night and yes­ter­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour ap­peared along­side So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Don­na Cox at a news con­fer­ence where he took full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what he deemed an “er­ror” in the fi­nal draft of the bill laid in Par­lia­ment on De­cem­ber 9.

In seek­ing to ex­plain how this er­ror oc­curred, Mr Ar­mour said he nev­er had sight of the fi­nal draft of the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Se­nior Cit­i­zens’ Pen­sion and Pub­lic As­sis­tance) Bill.

In­stead, he told re­porters the draft of the leg­is­la­tion he had seen did not in­clude any amend­ment to dis­qual­i­fy per­sons with sav­ings in the bank ex­ceed­ing $25,000 from ac­cess­ing the old-age pen­sion.

Ar­mour fur­ther ex­plained that such an amend­ment would have been made dur­ing the process of the leg­isla­tive re­view com­mit­tee, adding the draft pol­i­cy came back to Cab­i­net on No­vem­ber 21, when he was out of the coun­try.

While we are pre­pared to take the AG at his word, the ques­tion still has to be asked, why did Min­is­ter of Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, who was act­ing in his ab­sence dur­ing that pe­ri­od, or any oth­er Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial for that mat­ter, not pick up on this egre­gious er­ror?

Af­ter all, as the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al right­ly said, “It is nor­mal that in the ab­sence of a Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues.”

Fur­ther­more, if the $25,000 cap in the cur­rent bill was in­deed an er­ror, then who put it there, and how did they ar­rive at that fig­ure? What met­ric did they use to as­sess that an av­er­age cit­i­zen could sur­vive on such a mea­gre sum of mon­ey giv­en the cur­rent cost of liv­ing?

Whether yes­ter­day’s news con­fer­ence was the re­sult of what was tru­ly an er­ror, or pub­lic out­cry that forced the Gov­ern­ment’s hand, is a sep­a­rate is­sue. How­ev­er, for such a vul­ner­a­ble group of so­ci­ety, this news would have cer­tain­ly caused a de­gree of dis­tress as it per­tains to how they live.

Go­ing for­ward, the AG has promised to bring a new bill to Par­lia­ment, which of ne­ces­si­ty must seek to plug the cur­rent loop­holes in the pen­sion sys­tem that cost this coun­try sig­nif­i­cant­ly month­ly. At present, 109,000 peo­ple re­ceive a se­nior cit­i­zens’ pen­sion.

Con­cerns about abuse of the sys­tem are valid and must be dealt with in this new bill. The sys­tem can­not con­tin­ue to sus­tain el­der­ly cit­i­zens who are liv­ing abroad while fam­i­ly mem­bers col­lect on their be­half.

Fur­ther to this, any fu­ture leg­is­la­tion that con­tem­plates a pen­sion cap has to be rig­or­ous­ly scru­ti­nised, but it can­not be a sit­u­a­tion where ‘Pe­ter pays for Paul and Paul pays for all’.

In­stead, any dis­cus­sion of a pen­sion cap must be well thought out and must af­ford the most vul­ner­a­ble el­der­ly in our so­ci­ety, through the in­stru­ment of tax­pay­ers, a chance to live com­fort­ably at an age at which they can no longer fend for them­selves.

With­draw­ing the bill in its cur­rent state was im­por­tant.

How­ev­er, there are crit­i­cal loop­holes for Gov­ern­ment to fill in this coun­try’s pen­sion sys­tem.