Despite plans to do away with the pension book system and digitise the process, the Social Protection Ministry has announced that the 2019 Senior Citizen Pension Booklet will be distribution on Monday.
The Ministry made the disclosure in a notice in several of Guyana’s daily newspapers.
According to the notice, pensioners are expected to have their 2018 booklet as well as their national identification (ID) card to be able to uplift the new books.
This time around, the Ministry has also noted that all pensioners will be required to uplift their booklets themselves, as no authorization will be allowed.
It was noted that the distribution centers were placed as close as possible to pensioners.
Distribution of the new booklets will be facilitated from 09:00h on Monday and wind down daily around 14:00h at the more than 100 locations across the country.
This year’s disbursement of pension books is likely to come to a halt by December 7.
The government had first revealed plans for an electronic payment system for pensioners back in 2016. The system is intended to have pensioners uplift their monthly allocations through the local banks.
Director of Social Services, Wenthworth Tanner, was quoted by the Department of Public Information (DPI) as saying that the ministry was working in collaboration with the Public Telecommunications Ministry to upgrade the system into an automated one.
Tanner noted that an important aspect of the project will be the sanitisation of the old age pension database to remove deceased pensioners from the pension register.
The digitisation project was intended to ensure efficiency, accountability, and transparency in the distribution of Old Age Pension.
