Dear Editor,
Your letter pages do often serve as a kind of sounding-board for readers frustrated by state officialdom, or occasionally by sheer state officiousness. Having been deprived by my provider, the Guyana Sugar And Trading Enterprises Pension Scheme (GSTEPS) for the last 13 months and counting, and inclining to sense deliberate delaying tactics at work here, I turn to the forum of public opinion. Who knows, it may turn the tide in my favour.
I am a GuySuCo pensioner, 17 years retired. More than half of that time I lived in Guyana. To meet the understandable and not unreasonable requirement of the provider to establish to its satisfaction that I was still living, I needed to present myself in person to the office. There, I was briefly inspected (my pulse, I have to say, was not checked), and my pension payments continued to be made.
Living overseas for the past 7 years, I was required to furnish long-distance proof of my continuing earthly existence by means of the Life Certificate document. I was instructed to produce these certificates every 6 months, by the procedure of signing and dating the form in the presence of someone responsible, to quote verbatim: “If despatched through the post, must be certified by Justice of Peace, Minister of Religion, Bank Manager, Doctor or any other professional person.
“That responsible person is himself/herself to sign, after having witnessed, and as well as provide his/her address and occupation.”
Although GSTEPS had discontinued corresponding with overseas-based pensioners and sending blank Life Certificate forms through the post, instead sending these as attachments to their email, they would not entertain the idea of a pensioner in turn scanning the completed certificate and sending as an attachment to an email. They firmly insisted it should travel by post.
It took 5 weeks, from posting my latest duly completed Life Certificate to delivery at the GSTEPS office. Imagine therefore my consternation to almost immediately receive the following email: “Please be advise that we have received your Life Certificate but it was not propertly notorised (sic). We would need for you to get another one done. Kindly ensure it is stamped as well as signed.” Even if I was to comprehend the reasons for, and abide by these additional stipulations, it could well be another 5 weeks of postal delay.
GSTEPS clearly wish to guard against the possibility of, say, a crafty octogenarian pensioner (myself) devising an elaborate scam to defraud it of, in my case, the princely equivalent of US$40 per month.
I am curious to know whether the unpaid payments are being held in the interim within a separate account, and indeed whether, if and when GSTEPS became persuaded that I am still alive, for example if I blew some of my savings on an air ticket to Georgetown, I shall have earned some accrued interest. But of course, I cannot now send them an email to inquire about this specific point, as I have been doing so many times in the recent past. After all, in the judgement of GSTEPS, despite our frequent exchange of emails, I am not in the land of the living.
I cannot also, for similar reasons, tempted as I am, offer a suggestion for GSTEPS to utilise Skype, so as to have a face-to-face conversation with me. GSTEPS to its credit did “go electronic”, and it is possible to devise appropriate ‘secret questions’ say, to forestall fraud.
But I continue to feel disconcerted over this seeming trend that, precisely when state officialdom ought to be seeking ways of easing red-tape pressure on elderly folks, whenever possible, some part of said state officialdom should instead prefer to devise obstacles, with little impunity.
Yours faithfully,
Josh Ragnauth
