Min­is­ter of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox says new fa­cil­i­ties are be­ing put in place for lo­cals who live abroad and ben­e­fit from pen­sion pay­ments from this coun­try.

Speak­ing dur­ing a tour of the min­istry's new head of­fice on Tra­garete Road, Port-of-Spain on Wednes­day, Cox said she was un­fazed by spec­u­la­tion that the tour was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed due to the up­com­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

"At the end of the day, it’s tax­pay­ers' mon­ey, and we want to en­sure we get val­ue for it," she said. "So far, the project is pro­gress­ing well. We are very pleased. It’s im­por­tant to tour and as­sess our progress, as well as re­as­sure the pub­lic and our staff that we are look­ing out for them. This build­ing will serve them.

"Peo­ple will al­ways talk. This build­ing has been in the works for a long time. You don’t just start a project of this mag­ni­tude overnight or when an elec­tion is called. So, I would just ig­nore the scep­tics at this time," she said.

Min­is­ter Cox pro­vid­ed up­dates on on­go­ing ini­tia­tives with­in the min­istry, in­clud­ing ef­forts to curb fraud­u­lent pen­sion claims by in­di­vid­u­als liv­ing abroad.

“We've made a lot of progress. We formed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion and com­pli­ance unit, and they have been look­ing in­to these mat­ters. We have put more poli­cies and strin­gent mea­sures in place. There­fore, we ask per­sons to bring in their pass­ports, and from that, we can track their trav­el pat­terns. We have done a lot. For ex­am­ple, when per­sons sub­mit their life cer­tifi­cate—which proves they are still alive and el­i­gi­ble to con­tin­ue re­ceiv­ing the pen­sion—we al­so re­view their trav­el in­for­ma­tion,” the Min­is­ter ex­plained.

A Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) was signed with the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty’s Im­mi­gra­tion De­part­ment to ex­pe­dite the ver­i­fi­ca­tion process.

"This has helped us sig­nif­i­cant­ly in en­sur­ing that on­ly el­i­gi­ble per­sons re­ceive pen­sion ben­e­fits," she added.

Re­gard­ing the pend­ing re­lo­ca­tion of the min­istry's head of­fice, Cox high­light­ed the sig­nif­i­cant cost sav­ings the Gov­ern­ment would achieve by mov­ing all its of­fices to one build­ing.

"We will save a sub­stan­tial amount. Some of the lo­ca­tions we cur­rent­ly rent cost as much as $100,000 per month. Mov­ing in­to this build­ing will al­low us to re­duce these ex­pens­es, ul­ti­mate­ly ben­e­fit­ing tax­pay­ers," she not­ed.

Mean­while, Min­is­ter Cox shared that sys­tems are in place to as­sist de­port­ed na­tion­als in rein­te­grat­ing in­to so­ci­ety due to the Unit­ed States' new im­mi­gra­tion pol­i­cy.

She said there will be a col­lab­o­ra­tion with or­gan­i­sa­tions like Vi­sion on Mis­sion, which serves as first re­spon­ders.

"They con­duct the ini­tial in­ter­ven­tion, and if fur­ther as­sis­tance is need­ed, the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment steps in. So far, there have been no re­cent cas­es re­quir­ing our in­ter­ven­tion, but we re­main ready to help."

The work on the min­istry's new lo­ca­tion be­gan in Feb­ru­ary 2024 and is slat­ed to be com­plet­ed in Au­gust 2026, with 20 per cent of the con­struc­tion work fin­ished.