Knight ‘left out’ of pension restoration

Another public hospital worker has come forward to complain her pension was slashed because she was receiving an invalidity benefit, claiming she has been left out of the Government’s restoration of pensions for public officers who were retired medically unfit.

After spending 32 years and nine months as a maid at the Psychiatric Hospital and acting cook Phyllis Knight claimed that she has been forced to live on an invalidity benefit of $1,156.

Speaking to Barbados TODAY at her Country Park Tower home, Knight who suffers from Trigeminal Neuralgia, a chronic pain disorder that affects the nerve that carries sensation from the face to the brain, said she was disheartened when she realized 190 retirees received their reduced pensions from the Treasury – except her.

She said: “I signed up at work last year August to have a reduced pension until I reached 67 and when I called March 2019 they told me that I would not get a reduced pension, I would only get my gratuity.

“I asked her, ‘Seriously?’ She told me, ‘Yes.’ I asked her if when they go back if I would be entitled. She told me, ‘Yes, all of the invalidity benefit people would get back their pay and they would be backdated from the time the pension started.

“When I called this week to ask about it the lady took my ID card number and told me there is none for me. I cannot get it now.”

From her invalidity benefit of $1,156, Knight said she has to pay $669 to the Credit Union and $650 to National Housing Corporation for her home; thus, after she receives her pension she is left to look for $163 more dollars to pay her debtors, she said.

“Do the math people. It serious and then I cannot pay my other bills. I do not understand how they pay one set of people and another set they are not giving back.

“It is unfair and there are other people besides me that have this problem.

“What they can do if they want to do something is stop it completely and don’t give anybody none at all and let everybody live off of one check which would be the invalidity benefit check.”

Knight told Barbados TODAY she believes she is living in poverty because most of her money goes to pay her bills and she has no other source of income.

She said: “What is good for one should be good for all. All of us have debts to pay and all of us are in a bracket of invalidity benefit people and I am one that should be able to get my money.

“This is the Government that I put in to represent me and right now they are not representing me.

“Because right now I am living in poverty as right now because when you can give a cheque for $1156 and your bills come to $1300 you living in poverty because you would have to beg and I am too old to beg.

“I cannot borrow money from anybody because when I do not get it to pay back what am I going to do? These have you suffering already and it is not fair.”

She continued: “This Government said that it is going to protect people and that they are not going to be on the poverty line but now I am not in the poverty line I am on the poverty line. If I do not pay National Housing Corporation they are going to put a sticker on my door telling me I have to leave and then I have to go on the streets because I have nowhere else to go.

“All of these Ministers coming, and it is not fair to people.”

The mother of two declared that she should have received her due before Janice Harris – the lone protestor who picketed Parliament for her pension being reduced to a mere $47.51.

Her reasoning: She put in 32 years and nine months of service as opposed to Harris’ 16 years.

Knight said: “How she [referring to Janice] that put in sixteen years can get back her money and I cannot get back mine, I cannot get none at all.

“You mean I put in 32 years and nine months for nothing?

“People coming on Brass Tacks [radio talk show] and talking nonsense about you getting too much money. I could be getting too much money when I am getting $1,156 and have to pay away $1,300-something in bills?”

The former Psychiatric Hospital employee, who worked from 1986 until she was invalided out of the public service last November, expressed anger over the assurance from Minister of Finance Ryan Straughn yesterday that all 190 medically unfit persons would receive their pensions on or before pension day today, while she has received nothing.

“I was angry to see that I should be in that bunch getting one because it is something they told me I would get until I get 67.

“The lady told me it is a reduced pension from the Treasury until I get 67 and now they are telling me I cannot get any. Somebody is telling lies.”

Knight began to cry out for the pain in  her face and said that she attends the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for treatment for her face and frequently consults a neurologist about her condition.

“I [go] to the hospital but right now they want to send me away to have the surgery done so that this pain would go away.

“Whenever it happens, I have to look for the money and whatever.

“They have me on medication, but they said in order for [me] not to have the pain as it is a blood vessel pressing on the trigeminal nerve so if they move if from pressing on whichever one.

“Until then I cannot be dealing with pain in her face and pain with the Government not giving me my money. I work for my money.

“I do not have other incomes coming in and all of the people that quarrelling have other incomes coming in and they make bad for people by telling lies in the first place when they should not do that.

“They make bad for people like me that suffering,”