End to life certificates by January

This assurance was given yesterday by permanent secretaries in the Ministry of Social Development and Family Services, Jacinta Bailey-Sobers and Natasha Barrow, during a sitting of the Joint Select Committee (JSC) at the International Waterfront Complex, Port-of-Spain.

The sitting examined the operations of geriatric care facilities in the country.

“We could expect to get everything now within this fiscal (year) so that we could announce for the next fiscal that we will be doing away with persons having to come in (at social welfare offices to show that they are alive),” Bailey-Sobers said.

The permanent secretaries were responding to a suggestion by JSC Chairman Dhanayshar Mahabir that the practice of having persons over age 65 present themselves at social welfare offices to show that they were alive, should be discontinued because of the hardships it placed on them.

“We are looking at the 65 plus population, some of whom are institutionalised in care at homes for the elderly.

Many of them are living in their own homes and I would imagine, that of the 177,000 (persons in TT that are over age 65) over 90,000 - half of them are in receipt of the Old Age pension but there is a requirement that these people must make an appearance, whether once or twice a year to the Social Welfare Office to show that they are alive,” he said.

The independent senator, an economist, also noted there was a growing incidence of immobile persons over 80.

Mahabir noted the National Insurance Board (NIB) had decided to dispense with life certificates.

“Instead, they are substituting it with death certificates which are going to be issued from the Ministry of Legal Affairs to the NIB on a regular basis,” he said.