From left, Brown and Montague.

Gareth Manning, Sunday Gleaner Reporter

Despite the introduction of legislation to allow parish councillors to access pension benefits three years ago, there are many former local government representatives living their twilight years in abject poverty, without a pension.

The Retiring Allowances (Parish Councillors) Act, which was introduced by the previous People's National Party (PNP) administration in January 2005, made pension benefits available to mayors and councillors who had been serving since January 1, 1986. However, many who served before that time and are still alive do not receive any state benefits.

The situation is complicated by the fact that councillors were not paid from the public purse until 1986, leaving local representatives who had their years of service before 1986 outside of the pension net.

Difficulty needs tackling

Speaking with The Sunday Gleaner, chairman of the Association of Local Government Authorities (ALGA), Milton Brown, says it is a difficulty the Golding administration must tackle.

"It's a shame on the country, and that's a mild way of putting it," he contends.

"There are councillors prior to 1986 and even subsequent to then who are having tough times because there is no provision to take care of them in their bad times," discloses Brown, who is the mayor of May Pen.

He recommends that a fund be established to assist the public servants without a pension with a minimum benefit of $30,000 each month.

ALGA, he says, is preparing to take the matter to the Ministry of Finance.

"It is hard to have been a mayor and now you are on the PATH programme and that is all [some] depend on for survival," he says, noting that ALGA would know by next week exactly how many former councillors and mayors are alive and still without pension.

PATH (Programme for Advance-ment Through Health and Education) is a state-run welfare-assistance programme.

Robert Montague, state minister with responsibility for local government in the Office of the Prime Minister, supports ALGA's concern, but adds that the matter needs thorough discussion.

At present, there are only informal plans in place to assist councillors without a pension, he says. No discussion has yet taken place with Cabinet.

Montague says some of those councillors might have received compassionate grants from the Government, but he was not sure. However, he believes that a grant would not have been sufficient to maintain the councillors, who had worked full time.

Given honorarium

But there appears to be another difficulty. Montague points out that there are some councillors who served between 1986 and 1990 who are having problems accessing pensions because they were not actually given a salary but an honorarium, which is not pensionable or taxable.

Added to that, Mayor Brown argues that many councillors now brought under the law, have been forced to dig deep into their pockets to make retroactive contributions on pension benefits to the Government. The new law requires councillors to contribute six per cent of their salary as of January 1, 1986.

"As far as the fund is concerned, you owed money and measures had been taken by the (previous) government to collect these contributions that have been owed to bring the people up to date," explains Mayor Brown.

Currently, councillors earn a gross salary of $69,000 monthly and are guaranteed about two thirds of that as pension. Mayors earn twice as much and are guaranteed the same in pension.