Shane Su­perville 

Se­nior Re­porter 

shane.su­perville@guardian.co.tt 

In his first ad­dress as Prime Min­is­ter on a po­lit­i­cal plat­form, Stu­art Young rub­bished claims that the gov­ern­ment was seek­ing to re­move the old age pen­sions of se­nior cit­i­zens. 

The an­nounce­ment was one of sev­er­al promis­es put for­ward by Young dur­ing his fea­ture ad­dress at a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) meet­ing at the Mt Hope/ Mt Lam­bert Com­mu­ni­ty Cen­tre, off the East­ern Main Road, on Fri­day night. 

Last De­cem­ber, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the gov­ern­ment of in­tro­duc­ing leg­is­la­tion that would po­ten­tial­ly dis­qual­i­fy the el­der­ly from ac­cess­ing their pen­sions.

Re­fer­ring to the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Se­nior Cit­i­zen's Pen­sion and Pub­lic As­sis­tance) Bill 2024, Sec­tion 4 (g) of the bill states, “An in­di­vid­ual shall not be el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive a pen­sion un­less he: has sav­ings not ex­ceed­ing twen­ty-five thou­sand dol­lars.”

How­ev­er, Young dis­missed the claims, de­scrib­ing it as a scare tac­tic for po­lit­i­cal mileage.

"Don't let peo­ple who are des­per­ate to get their hands on the mon­ey in the trea­sury in­tro­duce fear in­to our se­nior cit­i­zens.

"I am telling you here tonight as Prime Min­is­ter, we are not touch­ing your se­nior cit­i­zens pen­sions.

"We are not in­tro­duc­ing new re­quire­ments that if you have 'x' amount in your bank ac­count, you can't get your pen­sion... in fact un­der them (the UNC), they didn't in­crease pen­sions for you."

Young con­tin­ued to take jabs at Per­sad-Bisses­sar, re­fer­ring to a video shared on so­cial me­dia which was edit­ed to show her fum­bling re­spons­es to ques­tions from the au­di­ence at the UNC's town hall meet­ing at the La Joya Com­plex, on Thurs­day night. 

The UNC on their of­fi­cial Face­book ac­count has since dis­missed the video as be­ing edit­ed, post­ing the full re­sponse to the ques­tions.

How­ev­er Young ques­tioned the com­pe­tence of the UNC and it's leader to ef­fect any re­al change, re­fer­ring to a ques­tion posed on con­cerns over for­eign ex­change.

"You have some­one who came right here in Aranguez/ St Joseph and when asked about plans and forex said with­out a wor­ry in the world, 'I don't have time I not ready to tell plans,' it's be­cause you don't have plans."

Among the an­nounce­ments made dur­ing his ad­dress, Young al­so promised to im­prove the qual­i­ty of cus­tomer ser­vice shown by gov­ern­ment work­ers.

Re­fer­ring to the process of com­plet­ing pa­per­work or re­quest­ing doc­u­ments, Young as­sured that build­ing cus­tomer re­la­tions was high on the agen­da.

"We must al­low our cit­i­zens when you walk in, you get treat­ed with kind­ness, you get treat­ed with re­spect, you get treat­ed with a more help­ful at­ti­tude.

"We must change the cul­ture that if... 'I can't do that,' okay well if I can't do that, what is the so­lu­tion... tell me how I can do it."

In tan­dem with the im­proved cus­tomer ser­vice for pub­lic ser­vants, Young said a digi­ti­sa­tion process was now un­der­way, not­ing that the "in­cu­ba­tion pe­ri­od" of the Min­istry of Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion was over, as work and re­sults were ex­pect­ed.

Young who par­tic­i­pat­ed in a walk­a­bout in parts of Mt Lam­bert and San Juan, one day ear­li­er on Thurs­day af­ter­noon, re­ferred to in­ter­ac­tions he had with two young men.

Recog­nis­ing the dif­fer­ent tal­ents and pas­sions of youths, he said while some peo­ple were not aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly in­clined, cre­ative en­er­gies would be utilised with the cre­ation of an arts, cul­ture and in­no­va­tion coun­cil.

It was his hope that such a de­ci­sion would be the first step to­wards har­ness­ing this coun­try's cre­ative po­ten­tial to gen­er­ate rev­enue.

Young con­clud­ed as he called on sup­port­ers to do their part in ral­ly­ing with his par­ty, re­call­ing his own tran­si­tion from at­tor­ney to tem­po­rary sen­a­tor to his var­i­ous terms in dif­fer­ent min­istries of gov­ern­ment, all of which he said has helped shaped his ap­proach and un­der­stand­ing of gov­er­nance. 

As the meet­ing con­clud­ed, Young to­geth­er with in­cum­bent MPs Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, Mar­vin Gon­za­les and prospec­tive can­di­dates for St Au­gus­tine Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal and Tabaquite Mar­isha Al­vara­do shared a light mo­ment on stage.

Short­ly af­ter Young, ac­com­pa­nied by his Spe­cial Branch se­cu­ri­ty de­tail greet­ed sup­port­ers as he was es­cort­ed out the build­ing amidst cheers and mu­sic.