Letter of the Day | The burden of being a pensioner in Jamaica

THE EDITOR, Madam:

‘Neighbour’, a fellow pensioner, crossed the road bearing a welcomed gift of green plantains. As usual, she gushed over my flowers and we talked about the abject failure of the National Water Commission (NWC) to deliver potable water consistently to our South Hanover communities.

For the last six months, the NWC has been issuing regular advisories captioned, ‘JPSCo. single-phase power supply issue at Shettlewood facility in Hanover’. Saying ‘Customer served [continue] to be without water’.

It appeared that the WC shifted the blame until residents began to be affected by the Jamaica Public Service (JPSCo.) single-phase problem. For months, sections of individual houses experience intermittent low voltage or no power, and calling JPSCo is often a tedious exercise in futility.

The neighbourly tête-à-tête changed to swapping notes on the physical stress on our bodies and on other motorists in straddling the cavernous potholes dotting the main road between Ramble, Hanover, and Anchovy, St James, in our almost daily travel to Montego Bay.

The friendly conversation shifted to the painful topic of applying for retirement benefits in Jamaica (she had worked overseas). We shared case studies. She has personal knowledge of retired persons who applied for pension benefits and actually died and did not receive a penny. We concluded that government ministries are, in this regard, notorious for holding up benefits, even as some Jamaican private sector companies are similarly criticised.

Two ministries came up in our discussions for delaying the processing and distribution of earned benefits, Education and Agriculture, and adding Labour and Social Security as it relates to benefits from the National Insurance Scheme (NIS). After four years of waiting, a former high-school principal and education officer wished an Education Ministry staffer a long life, hoping that the person lived to retire and encounter similar difficulties in accessing their pension.

Many have died while waiting for their applications for earned benefits to be processed. I shared two own case studies. Application submitted for National Insurance Scheme reimbursement took exactly one year of processing and disbursement. And, the pension claim to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries is still being held up by what can be construed as a technicality.

Jamaica is not a no-problem paradise for many blessed with living to a pensionable age. The burden of paperwork requirements, the extremely long wait, forestalls any prospect of the retiree sailing off into the sunset. We appeal to the Government and its agency to be more mindful of those in waiting who no longer collect a salary, those Jamaicans who gave many unstinting years of serving the nation.

CLAUDE WILSON

Pensioner