101-year-old forced to travel to uplift ID Card

May 14, 2010 News

Mrs. Springer-Smith examines her new National ID Card in the presence of GECOM officials, after affixing her thumb print to the register.

The Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) has come in for some criticism after one of Guyana’s centenarians was forced to travel several miles to collect her new National Identification Card.
Millicent Springer-Smith, who recently celebrated her 101st birthday anniversary, had to be transported by a car from her home at Triumph to the GECOM office at Coldingen, East Coast Demerara, after officials at the ID card distribution centre informed her relatives that she would have to present herself in order to uplift the document.
This is despite Mrs. Springer-Smith being a shut-in case, unable to move around without assistance.
In fact, the centenarian cannot even go in person to collect her old age pension. So it was with much frustration that relatives had to seek the services of the members of the Bakja Health Movement in Triumph to assist in getting her to the GECOM Coldingen Centre.
Speaking with this newspaper yesterday, the centenarian’s son Calvin Smith said that he is normally authorized to uplift his mother’s old age pension.
However workers at the pension office requested that he present his mother’s new identification card to uplift the payment.
Smith said that he went to GECOM’s East Coast Demerara ID Card Distribution Centre at Coldingen to uplift the card only to be told that the centenarian will have to present herself to uplift the document.
Although he explained his mother’s condition to the staff they insisted that she appear in person to uplift the ID card.
“I came here last week to collect the ID card and they told me that I can’t collect the ID card, I have to bring her. So I told them that she is a shut-in,” Smith told this newspaper.
The centenarian, who spoke to this newspaper while sitting in a car driven by a senior official of the Bakja Health Movement, said that she cannot understand why she was forced to go through such hardship to uplift the card.
“This rain, I got to come out. They say they ain’t got transportation. So I had to come out. At 101 I had to come through this rain fuh get ID card, when they could’a bring it,”
She said that at the time when she was registered, she was promised that arrangements would have been made to have the card delivered to her.
“Every time my son go to collect me pension they ask him, ‘Whey the ID card?’” Mrs. Springer-Smith said.
Thankfully the staff at the post office is familiar with the centenarian and her relatives and was able to facilitate payment of her pension on previous occasions.
Eventually, instead of having to leave the car she was in, the centenarian was facilitated by the GECOM staff, who took her thumb print and presented her with her National ID card while she was sitting in the vehicle.
“Now I am satisfied but they must do the road,” the centenarian said as the rain came pouring down once again.