Pension income for retired homeworkers

While doing research for another project, I came across a fascinating discovery.

Did you know that on the Government Channel, you can find statistics on how many people are in the labour force (609,800), where they work and what their occupations are?

There is data on the Central Statistical Office (CSO) website that could supply an entire academic analysis on the socio-political aspects of TT culture, enabling business and service organisations to plan for the future.

Labour and population statistics are broken down by district, which could be an enormous help for small and medium-sized entrepreneurs. They will not have to guess what the extent of their potential markets will be any more.

The upgrade in the format, the subject matter covered and the extent of coverage in relation to employment, age and even by geographic district, is a tribute to the CSO staff.

The lack of actual data that could provide usable information was a source of frustration to students, businesses and international comparator organisations for decades. It was due to the lack of professionally trained staff, not only data collection and assessment personnel, but monitoring and evaluation specialists.

It is this lack of skilled personnel that is causing population dissent and distrust in the ongoing debate over the property tax, not so much over the concept of property tax itself, but the sloppy way it is being implemented.

If it does what Mr Imbert promised it will do – provide funding for repairing roads and drainage, replace repeatedly broken water mains, ensure the public utilities important to sanitation actually work – people will grumble about yet another tax, but accept that what was done needed to be done. But first trust, which is now missing, has to be built.

The resultant compilation by the CSO and Parliament is a treasure trove of data and information.

For those unfortunate enough not to have been put through a course on quantitative and qualitative statistics at UWI, there is a vast distinction between data and information, which for the uninitiated can produce misunderstanding, often the source of non-facts used to influence people in political campaigning.

The distinction where there are differences can persuade people to behave positively or negatively towards commercial, racial, political or industrial-relations issues.

It is a mind-control method used to generate support that opinion-pushers will try to lead you into. When I was a teenager, it was called "baffling you with a bull" or "suckering you with science." For people with degrees, you can add "misleading you with maths."

It works. One of the textbooks used to help you discover the truth is titled, How To Lie with Statistics. Find it.

I have often wondered who makes the final determination of what categories are important enough to be included in statistical compilations.

Back in 1994, an act was passed in Parliament called the Counting of Unremunerated Work Act. It was intended to recognise the qualitative value of unpaid but vital work done traditionally in the home by women, and now, by choice, by many men. It is work that enables other family members to be employed and keep the economy going.

If that work is done in someone else’s home, including elderly care, it will be paid in accordance with market values, but if done at your own home, it is not valued for the contribution it makes toward national development.

Without that unremunerated work, which is done by both men and women in today’s world, elderly and disabled people are abandoned and children remain undisciplined and unprepared to attend school.

The act was intended to recognise the valuable community work that is done voluntarily, that develops discipline in youth by those who manage sporting, creative and artistic endeavours. Work that supports the aged and disabled, through faith-based activities, that may build character in children as they grow.

As our economy has made single-earner households difficult to sustain, we have seen the result in dysfunctional families and mentally unhealthy children.

This category is now reflected in the CSO statistics, although not disaggregated by gender, which is a pity, as most people are not aware of the pro-bono work men do to support youth development. The agenda behind the concept of statistically assigning a quantitative value for this kind of community work was to ensure that it would provide a measurable basis for pensions for those employed in this very valuable community work, who had never made NIS contributions, although their work was hard and continuous. And under a different name, it was done.

Anyone who has been an unpaid homeworker all their lives, upon attaining retirement age, can apply for a retirement grant and get a monthly income, a little higher than the normal NIS pension, to support them in their old age.

This also solves a gender-based sociological problem in which, as women age, married, stay-at-home wives are abandoned and their partners leave them incomeless for a younger partner, without a pension in their old age.

Now, when many women are the sole family support and men are the home carers, the reverse may also take place, and the male partner, unemployed at the age of 65, may need to apply for it.