The Coalition government is committed to delivering the best of service to the elderly in the country. These sentiments echoed across the parliament as Minister for Women, Children and Social Protection, spoke on government’s social pension scheme.
“Our Social Pension Scheme is one of the best in the Asia-Pacific Region,” says Minister Tabuya.
In parliament, Minister Tabuya said Fiji’s status was recently acknowledged during a Regional Conference on Population Ageing in Bali Indonesia whereby Director Social Protection was asked to be part of the panel discussion on how social pensions can enhance old age financial security in emerging Asia Pacific using Fiji as an example.
“Recognizing the ongoing evolution of Fiji’s social assistance towards a comprehensive life cycle approach, the programs are reviewed and managed accordingly.
“Over the years the benefit amount are adjusted, the age eligibility is reduced. We started off in 2013 with elderly citizens at the age of 70 and above with a benefit of $30 per month.
It was reduced to 68 years in 2016, further down to 66 and down to 65 in 2018 till now.
The allowance was increased from $30.00 to $50 and later to $100 per month. With the inception of the Coalition Government the allowance is now $115.00 for those aged 65-69 years old.
For those that are 70 years and above, they are now receiving $125.00 plus their $25 Transport Assistance Cash top up to subsidize the diverse transport needs of older persons in Fiji. We currently have a total of more than 52,000 individuals benefiting from this scheme.
Minister Tabuya said the department is committed in the review of all existing Social Protection Programs including the Social Pension Scheme under our reform agenda to ensure improve targeting, adequacy and efficiency.
“One of the focus area is to digitize records and automate all our processes since we are doing it manually for the past years. We are also looking at integrating our system to other existing pensions, superannuation and BDM system to allow validation of pension status of applicants and life status of beneficiaries respectively”.