Outcomes - Selected Case Summaries
Categories
Revision of Pension Legislation
Investigation | 02 April 2019
Public Service Pension Board (PSPB)
In April 2004, a fire service officer who was receiving treatment for lupus was dismissed from the Cayman Islands Fire Service. The reason given for his release did not involve his medical condition so when he sought to access his pension funds, he was restricted from doing so by the Pension Law. The PSPB's Head of Plan Administration emailed him in January 2008 to tell him that the Financial Secretary was planning to ask Cabinet to amend the Law, allowing people diagnosed with serious illnesses to access their pension funds. The complainant approached us more than 10 years later because the amendments had not been made.
We wrote to the Managing Director of the PSPB to bring the matter to her attention. A draft Pensions Bill was presented to Caucus in March 2019 for furtherance to Cabinet. In August 2019, after 11 long years of suffering by the complainant, the PSPB notified us that their promise had been fulfilled and that the Public Service Pensions (Amendment) Law 2019 was in force. The complaint was able to apply for disability retirement and is awaiting the decision of the PSPB.