Fraud is fraud, even when it wearing slippers

Jun 21, 2026 Dem Boys Seh, Features / Columnists

Dem Boys Seh…

(Kaieteur News) – Dem boys seh some people does got a strange understanding of patriotism. Fuh years dem living overseas. Snow falling outside, central heating inside, and Guyana only crossing dem mind when somebody sending black cake fuh them at Christmas time.

Then the government start to raise de old age pension and giving pensioners transportation cash grant. Suddenly dem discover dem is patriotic Guyanese.

Dem boys hear how some people flying home, applying fuh a local passport, opening a bank account and then finding dem way onto the old-age pension roll despite not meeting the residency requirement. If that is true, then leh we call it by its proper name. It is fraud.

And fraud is fraud whether yuh commit it in Georgetown, New York, Toronto or Timbuktu.

Then there is another set. Dem boys hear some people paying one month pension as a bribe to get onto the pension roll. Now imagine that. Yuh paying a bribe to qualify fuh a benefit intended fuh poor senior citizens and then collecting taxpayers’ money every month after that. If that ain’t fraud, dem boys don’t know what fraud is.

Anybody who deliberately deceives the authorities to collect a pension illegally should be charged. And not only charged. Dem should be made to repay every cent collected unlawfully.

After all, if a man rob a bank and spend the money, nobody does tell he, “Well, since yuh already spend it, keep it.”

Dem boys seh every illegal pension being paid is money that could have gone towards increasing the pensions of genuine recipients. Every fraudulent claimant helping to keep down the benefits of elderly people who actually live here and depend on that money.

What really puzzling is something else. How come nobody notice that the pension roll appears to be growing faster than the population of pensioners?

Dem boys seh the last published census give an estimate of the population over sixty-five. Yet every year the pension roll swelling like dough with baking powder.

At this rate, Guyana soon got more pensioners than people reaching pension age. Maybe dem discover a secret fountain of youth in reverse.

Or maybe people who living overseas for decades finding a way to age twice—once abroad and once in Guyana.

Dem boys seh somebody need to count carefully. Because numbers don’t lie. But sometimes people do.

Talk half. Leff half.

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Dem Boys Seh, fraud, Old Age Pension, pensioners, transportation cash grant

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