By Alesha Capone
Werribee man Alex Allan has been waiting more than 130 days to receive the age pension.
Mr Allan said he visited the Werribee Centrelink office to apply for the pension on March 14 this year – the day after retiring from 29 years of working for Hobsons Bay council.
The 65-year-old said he had asked the Centrelink office if he could apply for the pension in January, but was told he needed to wait until after he retired.
Mr Allan said despite filling in all his pension application paperwork, he is yet to see a single payment.
“It’s four months now – it’s ridiculous, I still haven’t got it [the pension] and it’s now August,” he said.
Mr Allan is not the only one in his family to have had trouble with Centrelink – his wife, Karen, spent more than 200 days waiting for her application to receive a disability pension to be processed.
Mr Allan said Karen only began to receive her payments last month, after he asked the office of Lalor MP Joanne Ryan to look into it.
Ms Ryan recently spoke about the issue of long waiting times for Centrelink payments in federal Parliament.
Last month, she gave a speech about a man from the west who waited 161 days for his pension application to be processed.
“As the local federal member, I have noticed an increase in horror stories from residents informing me that their wait times to access Centrelink have blown out,” Ms Ryan told Star Weekly.
“On paper, the median processing time for an age pension has increased from 36 days to 49 days this financial year.
“In reality, pensioners are waiting multiple months on top of the median processing time.”
A spokesperson from the Department of Human Services said “a range of factors” could cause delays including failing to submit all of the required supporting documentation.
