Dear Editor,
On behalf of the Hon. Minister P. Manickchand I would like to acknowledge the receipt of your correspondence dated 28-07-2007 enclosing a letter from K. Singh captioned “Two pages were taken out from an old age pension book” (07.07.27) for her comments.
Mr K Singh’s letter did not provide some useful basic information eg ID or passport number, address and date of submission of Old Age Pension (OAP) claims which would have been of tremendous help to guide an appropriate response in this particular instance.
For the benefit of him and the public, I would like to say that according to the regulations, “pension shall commence to accrue at the end of the month after the date on which the claim for pension is received by the appropriate authority or at the end of the month after the date on which the claimant first becomes entitled to the pension, whichever date is the later”.
On the issue of ‘taken out the first two pages’, all OAP coupon booklets are printed with twelve (12) coupons, representing the 12 months of each calendar year. The issuing officer will give the OAP coupon booklet with coupons from the effective month on which the pension becomes effective, so the other months coupons prior to the “effective months” are cancelled, detached from the book and then are kept in the respective claim for record keeping and scrutiny.
Mr. Singh is free to contact me to seek any clarification at telephone number 225-6202.
Yours faithfully,
D. Singh
Asst. Chief Probation & Social Services Officer
Ministry of Labour, Human Services and Social Security
