A Bermudian pensioner has mounted an e-mail campaign targeting the Department of Social Insurance and the Accountant General's office concerning what she calls obscene delays in receiving her contributory pension payments.

Brenda Lana Smith lives in the UK and relies on a monthly cheque being posted to her from the Bermuda Social Insurance Department.

Sixty-nine-year-old Ms Lana Smith first contacted Social Insurance by e-mail on May 8th to inform them that her Barclay's bank account had not been credited with the expected payment of ?223.85 for April. Nearly two months and dozens of e-mails later, she has still not received that payment. It looks likely that she will still be waiting on her 70th Birthday tomorrow.

Ms Lana Smith first contacted ten days ago having read an article about the government's attempts to get more local companies to use e-business. "The government needs to fix its own e-business blind spot as their archaic system relies on the vagaries of unsecured snail-mail to transfer Contributory Pension payments to its overseas recipients' accounts." she claimed

Ms Lana Smith recommended that the Bermuda Government should explore the possibility of electronically depositing her Contributory Pensions benefit payments directly into her Barclays' current account in Britain. According to her, the British Government Department for Work and Pensions already uses a secure IT system to pay benefits.

Contacted to explain how the Bermuda system works, Elizabeth Butterfield of the Social Insurance Department said that for Bermuda pensioners residing in the UK, the usual process involves the Accountant General posting a cheque through the mail to a UK retail bank, who then draw the cheque through Chase Manhattan.

But the combination of two government departments, two banks and an unreliable postal service is proving to be a headache for this particular pensioner. According to Mrs. Lana Smith, since December 2002, three payments have been "delinquent" and it is quite common for her to have to wait more than a month for payments to reach her account.

To make matters worse, when a cheque goes missing in the post, there is a drawn-out process to ensure the overseas draft has not been cashed before a new one is issued.

But once they have established that the cheque has not been cashed, they issue a stop payment notice to Chase Manhattan.

Department of Social Insurance acting director, Karen Daniels told Ms Lana Smith: "Once it has been established that there have been no fraudulent activities with a payment, the Accountant General's Department would reissue the payment. I can appreciate that you are anxious to receive these funds. However there are certain elements involved in the reissuance of a payment that are out of the control of this and the Accountant General's Department."

Speaking to , Ms Daniels said that this was an isolated case, but admitted that it was taking too long to sort it out.

" Unfortunately, the current delay now lies with our correspondent bank, Chase Manhattan in London despite our subsequent attempts in following up. Usually, confirmation of stop payment procedures initiated by our Department for US or Canadian drawn cheques take a far less processing time, e.g. two to three days. However for UK drawn cheques, this process takes longer."

She added "They (the Accountant General's office) have a hard time communicating with Chase."

As for whether the government should update its procedures for transferring funds, a civil servant in the Accountant General's office explained that the only alternative is a wire transfer via the Bank of Butterfield. However the pensioner has to pay a $30 fee for this wire service, which is a big chunk out of a monthly pension allowance.

Consequently, he said, the majority of pensioners still elect to receive a cheque, or as in Mrs. Lana Smith's case, for the cheque to be sent directly to their bank.

In a previous e-mail to Ms Lana Smith, Ms Daniels wrote: "Methods for improving electronic foreign pension payments are currently being looked into in order to ensure a more secured and timely payment. In the meantime, we would appreciate that you will continue to be patient as we are attempting to do all that we can to ensure that you receive your April 15, 2003 payment. "

Asked yesterday what those improved methods might be, Ms Daniels said: One of the options that we're looking into is dealing with correspondent banks directly and providing them with the pensioner's bank accounts." At present however, she said "Most pensioners prefer to have a cheque in their hand."

Ms Daniels said that she herself would prefer to dispense with cheques altogether as this would be more secure and would expedite matters. She said that the Social Insurance Department plan to get together with the Accountant General's office to discuss to look at the options.

In Ms Lana Smith's case, a stop payment has now been issued and they will either reissue another cheque or arrange for money to be wired to her account next week.

But as a matter of policy, pensioners have to wait while Chase Manhattan and the Accountant General's office sort out the matter of missing cheques. More than one civil servant commented to that this is necessary because it is quite common for pensioners to get confused and forget whether or not they have received a cheque. "These are seniors, after all." said one.