In the early morning hours yesterday, many recipients of Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits discovered that they were unable to access newly deposited SSI funds, although it was later discovered that system outages may be to blame for the delay.
According to a U.S. Treasury Department spokesman, David Starck, SSI payments are usually released to SSI recipients on the first day of the month around 1 a.m. and deposited on debit cards. However, due to intermittent system problems from 1 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. several payments were not readily accessible to numerous recipients; which many didn’t realize until they attempted to access the funds using their debit cards. Government officials are still unsure as to how many SSI beneficiaries were impacted by the recent outages.
Hopefully the cause of the recent system problems will be identified as soon as possible so that issues like this can be avoided in the future. After all, many SSI recipients rely on this income for daily needs and any delay in payment can be extremely detrimental.
For example, SSI benefits are often paid to disabled children under the age of 18 who have limited income and resources. Many of these children suffer from severe disabilities such as muscular dystrophy, blindness or cerebral palsy. In fact, in order for a disabled child to even be eligible for SSI benefits they must have a physical or mental impairment that severely limits his or her activities, not to mention that the condition must last at least one year or likely to result in death. Consequently, it is imperative that these individuals receive their SSI benefit payments promptly and system outages like the one yesterday do not become a regular occurance.
Source: The Baltimore Sun, “Access to SSI payments temporarily disrupted,” Eileen Ambrose, July 1, 2013