Minister calls for tightening up of ID card procedures

Social Solidarity Minister Dolores Cristina yesterday called for an assessment of how identity cards were issued or amended, saying the ease with which one could change his address - without actually changing his residence - was opening the way for benefit abuse.

She told Parliament that information given on identity cards could determine whether a person was eligible for certain social benefits and it was therefore important to put in place a mechanism that would ensure that such information is correct.

A simple change of address, for example, could show a person as living alone or eligible for benefits as head of a household.

It was found that for some people it was common practice to change the address on their ID card for benefit purposes.

There was a case, for example, where three people who lived together gave different addresses of the same residence: one gave the number of the back door, the other gave the house name only and the third gave the number of the main door.

There were also many cases where the address on the ID card was actually the address of a garage.

Changing one's address is so easy that one could pick any address and have it put on his ID card, possibly even without the other tenants knowing, Mrs Cristina emphasized.

She made the comments at the end of her introduction (started last Wednesday) of a debate on amendments to the Social Security Act. The Bill gives new powers to the Benefit Fraud Directorate and also introduces measures to stamp out abuse of invalidity pension.

The minister stressed again that the purpose of this Bill was to ensure that benefits were only directed to those who needed them. Reducing or removing benefit fraud would enable the government to channel funds to benefits which needed better funding, she said.

One of the principles of this Bill was that an invalidity pension should not be given for life and that there would be periodic reviews and medical audits. Eligibility criteria were being tightened up, medical assessments would be made by a small group of doctors engaged by the Social Security Department and efforts would be made for workers to be rehabilitated so that they could be able to do some work, even if they could no longer perform their original activity. The system would be more transparent, with impairment tables to establish the level of invalidity.

There was no doubt, the minister said, that there was extensive abuse in invalidity pension. Government spending on this benefit rose to Lm16 million from Lm9 million in 1999 with the number of beneficiaries having reached 9,000, a number, which was unreasonably high.