Question NW2494 to the Minister of Finance

Reply:

A certain person (name furnished), (applicant) applied for the funeral benefit in respect of the death of the member, (name furnished), during June 2017. At that time there was insufficient evidence submitted to support the application to be recognized as the life partner of (name furnished) and the accompanying related benefits. The applicant was requested to resubmit her application for recognition of a life partner which resubmitted application was received in March 2018. This application however erroneously indicated that (the applicant) was the child of the deceased in which case the applicant cannot be recognized as the life partner.

It was hereafter established that this was an error as applicant was not the child of the deceased. There were however still insufficient and supporting evidence from the family of the deceased to corroborate the existence of the life partnership as the evidence submitted purported to substantiate the factual dependency of the applicant only due to the family of the deceased not wishing to provide verification of the existence of a life partnership. As a result of the conflicting accounts, the matter was submitted to the internal Fraud Unit of the Government Pensions Administration Agency to validate the existence of the life partnership between the applicant and the deceased. The validation investigation was concluded on 3 September 2018 and payment in this matter in recognition of the life partnership application is currently in process.