Abolish use of cheques

THE THEFT of 1,836 social development cheques from the Sangre Grande post office on Monday constitutes a serious breach of security at a time when we rely on the postal service more than ever.

Not only must those responsible be held to account, but also the TT Postal Corporation must conduct a review of its security measures to ensure such an incident cannot happen again, whether at its Sangre Grande office or elsewhere.

Further, the State must learn lessons from this incident and accelerate its ongoing efforts to abolish the use of cheques and transition more fully to disbursing payments electronically. The year is 2022, not 1982. We are in the internet age. Government must get with the programme.

The disruption caused by the theft was underlined on Tuesday when the Ministry of Social Development and Family Services announced the suspension of encashment of all cheques related to social welfare grants at groceries, supermarkets and retail venues for the months of February and March.

All of this has raised questions over why state agencies continue to use cheques in a situation where safer and more secure, as well as more environmentally friendly, digital transactions are possible.

The ministry does use direct deposits and is engaged in a drive to encourage this. However, less than half (48 per cent) of the 186,000 grant and pension recipients on the ministry’s books were signed up for this service as of December.

That figure is too low, especially in the context of the Government’s own policy of seeking to move the public service towards digital transformation. It was only on Monday that the Prime Minister himself reiterated this policy objective at a workshop on digital transformation in the public sector.

It is useful to consider the reasons why not enough people are signed up to the State’s digital services.

The situation in the education sector has underlined the fact that there are disparities in terms of access to computers and electronic devices. This is likely to be a particular problem in rural areas where reliance on social support grants might also be high.

However, in today’s world, you do not need to own a computer to access digital services. All you need is a mobile phone, which even people in rural areas have based on the amount of crime-scene videos and photos being placed on social media, all sourced from mobile phones.

TT’s mobile connection and internet use rates are above average for the Caribbean region. According to the DataReportal website, there are more mobile connections than there are people, with a 136 per cent mobile connection rate in 2021. Our internet usage is also high, at 77.3 per cent of the population.

So it is not much of a stretch to expect higher rates of direct deposits.

The State needs to consider making direct deposits mandatory. Or else it must devise a more effective strategy to get people to log in to its services.