Pensioners who rely solely on Social Security payments have been promised their long-awaited monies by the end of this week.
So says Finance Minister Gaston Browne who says $10M was paid into the fund last week Friday to make these payments available.
He says the government intends to make another three million available to settle the balance.
“We paid them $10M last Friday and for the rest of this month, they should get an additional $3M. So for the month alone, we would have paid about $13M.”
“Our monthly payment is about, just over $2M a month and we would have paid them $13M by the end of this month.”
Browne says his government has doubled payments to social security over the past few years, in an effort to keep the scheme viable.
“By the end of this year, we would have paid in about $100M into social security for 2020 and 2021. We would have virtually doubled our payment to Social Security in order to keep the Scheme alive and that is one of the major achievements of my administration, in which we would have added close to an additional $50M in payment.”
“The additional payments would have gone towards reducing the outstanding debt that was incurred by former labour party administration as well as the UPP administration. They had significant arrears in payment and that constituted a debt.”
PM Browne added that his administration, (Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party) is the only one that would have paid all of its Premium since the commencement of the Social Security Scheme.
