Social Security Director Confirms UPP Added $127M to Arrears
Antigua and Barbuda’s Social Security Director says arrears owed to the scheme grew sharply under the United Progressive Party (UPP) government’s first term, rising by $127 million between 2003 and 2009.
Appearing on the Browne and Browne Show, David Mathias explained that by October 2003, just before the UPP came to office, the amount outstanding stood at roughly $366 million. By 2009, that figure had increased to nearly $494 million.
Prime Minister Gaston Browne, who was also on the program, calculated that the difference amounted to $127 million in arrears added within the UPP’s first five years in office. Mathias agreed with the assessment, confirming that the arrears came from unpaid premiums, including deductions taken from employees that were not paid over to the scheme.
By 2010, the UPP government consolidated the debt into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Social Security Board, creating a liability of $550 million that combined unpaid contributions, loans, and penalties.
The confirmation underscores the long-running accumulation of arrears across administrations and highlights how the UPP period added substantially to the scheme’s financial burden.
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ABLP continue to live in the past and the constant vilifying of UPP (even though they haven’t been in office for 12-13 years); and, in particular the return of the Most Honourable Harold – who celebrated his 70th birthday the other day. Marvellous!
The fact that this written piece of utter garbage 🗑 has a picture of Harold Lovell (I mean why so?) and not of Baldwin Spencer who was the leader of the UPP at the time highlights the fear and foreboding the ABLP still have of the recent return of Mr Lovell.
As a political commentator, I expected this negativity about his return, but I never expected in a month of Sundays that all the so-called ills would be an avalanche placed on his head. Pure nonsense!
Without doubt the ABLP apologists are making themselves look more stupendous each and everyday.
These written “hit” pieces are now so predictable
MR LOVELL DEM ‘FRAID AH YOU BOSS …
The habit of using Board members and government employers to try and politicize things must stop. The point is, successive governments over the years have not been as prudent with Social Security funds as they should have been. And that is why we have to correct that going forward and ensure that every cent of social security funds are paid over to the Board on a timely basis and those funds can be accounted for by the Board who was appointed to look after the interest of the contributors, not the government. The politization of all these boards are regrettable and does very little to protect, preserve and safeguard the interest of the contributors.
So eleven years after the UPP was removed from office is the first time such information came to the attention of the director??????
Mathias has been on numerous programs.
He has spoken at length on issues related to debt owed to Social Security.
Never has theat I formation been made public.
Suddenly like a rabbit out of a hat that information is headline news.
Are our public officials ballsless and programmable? What js Mathias’ motive for “concelaing”that information and “releasing” it at this moment?
Is he about to throw his hat into the ring?
Has he taken a dose of the red “dang-ger”?