From February 8, pensions will rise: but only for retirees who submit a missing certificate, leaving many saying: “They know we don’t have internet access”

The notice went up on a Tuesday morning, printed in faint black ink and taped crookedly to the dusty glass of the local post office. By lunchtime, the news had spread from the queue at the counter to the benches in the park: from February 8, pensions would rise. But there was a catch—one line, almost hidden in the middle of the paragraph, that changed the sound of the news from hopeful to heavy: to receive the increased amount, retirees had to submit a “missing certificate” by a specific date. No certificate, no raise.

The Notice on the Wall

The first people who saw it weren’t scrolling on their phones. They were leaning on walking sticks, clutching folded shopping bags, squinting at that sheet of paper on the post office door as the winter wind threaded through their coats. The air smelled faintly of exhaust and yesterday’s rain, and the only warmth came from the muffled conversations beginning to rise.

“From February 8, pensions will rise,” the text said, neat in its bureaucratic certainty. A second sentence followed, colder, more clinical: “Pensioners must submit the required certificate electronically via the portal or app by [date].” At the bottom, in smaller typeface, came a final instruction: “No other form of submission will be accepted.”

At first, there was a brief flutter of happiness: a rise in pensions meant maybe some respite—less calculating at the supermarket shelf, fewer choices between medicine and electricity. But then the questions began, turning the air around the notice sharp and uneasy.

“What portal?” one woman asked aloud, her voice more puzzled than angry. “What app?”

A man with a wool cap tilted over one eye shook his head slowly. “They know we don’t have internet access,” he muttered, half to himself, half to anyone who would listen. The others around him nodded, lips pressed tight. The paper fluttered slightly in the wind, indifferent.

Between Paper and Pixels

Officially, the plan was simple, even reasonable on paper: verify that every pensioner still met the criteria, update the records, reward them with a small but meaningful increase. It was, the authorities would say, about efficiency, transparency, and modernisation. Why drown in paper, they’d argue, when everything could be uploaded, verified, filed, and processed with a few clicks?

Those clicks, however, are a language not everyone speaks.

Imagine being 75 and having to navigate a digital portal you’ve never seen before. The mouse feels slippery in your hand, the keyboard is a landscape of identical black squares, each press a guess. Your eyesight is weaker; the letters shrink into a blur of light. You worry you might click the wrong thing and “break” something important. This is not the world you spent your life learning. Yet now, a part of your dignity—your pension—is suddenly resting in the hands of screens and passwords.

Most of the retirees who gathered around that notice don’t have broadband contracts, smartphones, or email addresses. Many still trust paper more than pixels—the physical weight of a form, the ink of a stamp, the reassuring presence of a human being across a counter. For them, the requirement to upload a certificate online felt less like a step into the future and more like a quiet shutting of a door.

They had spent their lives in factories, on farms, in offices where the technology was mechanical, not digital. Their knowledge is in calloused hands, in muscle memory, in stories told over tea, not in navigating drop-down menus and two-factor authentication.

The Quiet Burden of a “Simple” Form

“My grandson will help,” one man said with a brave shrug in the small cluster outside the post office. But there was a tremor in his voice as he said it. What if the grandson was busy? What if he lived in another town? What if there was a mistake, some detail missed, some button left unpressed?

Behind every “simple” online process is a hidden list of requirements that, for many younger people, is an inconvenience—but for older people, can be an insurmountable wall. An email account. A smartphone or computer. A stable internet connection. The ability to read small text on a glowing screen for long enough to complete the task. The patience to retry when the page doesn’t load, the form resets, or an error message appears like a reprimand.

“I don’t even know how to turn on a computer,” an older woman confessed to her neighbour that afternoon. In her small apartment, the radio hummed quietly in the corner, filling the room with soft static and morning news, but there was no wifi signal, no blinking router, no cables snaking along the floor. The internet, for her, was not a utility—it was an abstraction.

And yet the instruction was clear: submit the missing certificate electronically. Otherwise, the increase that made such neat sense on a government spreadsheet would remain, for many, theoretical—numbers that never touched their bank accounts, promises that never made it to the checkout counter or the pharmacy.

When a Certificate Becomes a Test

On the surface, it’s just another document: a certificate to prove continued eligibility, to reassure the system that the person it once approved is still the same person, still living, still entitled. Bureaucracies love certificates—they transform people into cases, cases into numbers, numbers into lines on an annual report.

But in towns and apartment blocks, that certificate is not just paperwork. It has become a quiet test of who gets to belong in the digital age, and who gets left standing at the threshold.

The friction isn’t only technical; it’s emotional. Many pensioners feel a creeping sense of being judged. To ask for help means revealing their vulnerability, their lack of knowledge, their dependency. In a life built on independence and pride—on getting up early, working long hours, handling their own affairs—that dependency can sting.

Some will lean heavily on family. Others, without nearby relatives, will turn to neighbours, church volunteers, or the kindness of strangers at the local library. But some will do nothing—frozen not by laziness, but by fear and confusion. The thought of doing something wrong and losing not just the increase, but the pension itself, may be enough to keep them from trying at all.

It’s here, in this gap between policy and person, that the sentence starts making the rounds, passed from bench to bench, from market stall to bus stop: “They know we don’t have internet access.” It carries more than frustration—it carries accusation. A sense that the system is asking them to prove their worth while quietly arranging things so that many will fail.

Numbers on Paper, Lives in Motion

Inside a government office, the story looks different. Screens glow with spreadsheets and graphs, target charts and budgeting projections. Someone points to a line that shows “increased digital uptake,” another taps a paragraph that lauds “streamlined administration” and “cost-effective verification.” On paper—and in pixels—it looks efficient, modern, necessary.

There are arguments to be made for it too. Digital forms reduce counterfeit documents, make fraud harder, speed up processing times, and centralize records. They can even, in theory, free staff from repetitive manual tasks to focus on the most complex or vulnerable cases. Someone in that office sincerely believes they are improving the system, making it more sustainable for the future.

But the numbers on the screen do not show the old woman who walks thirty minutes to the town hall only to be told, “You have to do it online.” They don’t show the man who spends two hours on the bus to the nearest city, clutching a folder of documents, only to discover that the clerk can’t submit them for him. They don’t capture the late-night anxiety, the questions murmured over the kitchen table: “What if we miss the deadline? What if they stop paying?”

Policy thrives on averages and projections. Lives unfold in specifics.

Kitchen Tables Turned Help Desks

As the February deadline draws closer, a quiet transformation begins across neighbourhoods. Kitchen tables become makeshift help desks. Old wooden chairs are pulled a little closer to the router for a stronger signal. Smartphones are laid gently on lace tablecloths next to cups of tea. Grandchildren, nieces, neighbours log into portals they’ve barely heard of before, trying to navigate systems built with language that seems designed to intimidate.

There’s a peculiar intimacy in this process: passwords whispered across generations, identity documents placed carefully in young hands, old fingers hovering just above the touchscreen, afraid to tap. The smell of soup or coffee mingles with the cold, blue light of the screen. Bureaucracy, usually so distant and faceless, now sits between two people in a very real room.

Some of these moments are tender. “Don’t worry, we’ll figure it out,” a young woman tells her grandfather, scrolling slowly, reading each line aloud. He watches her, equal parts grateful and guilty, wishing he could do it himself, wishing the world hadn’t changed so quickly, so completely.

But not everyone has someone to sit at the table with them. Those are the people most at risk of quietly slipping through the cracks: the widow living alone at the edge of town, the pensioner whose children live abroad, the man whose eyesight has failed faster than his pride will admit.

For them, a missing digital certificate is not just a bureaucratic oversight. It’s another reminder that the future is moving on without them.

A Small Raise, a Large Question

From February 8, pensions will rise—at least, that’s what the notice promises. The increase itself may not be dramatic. It won’t suddenly turn tight budgets into luxury, or erase the long arithmetic of the end of the month. But it represents something important: a recognition, however modest, of the value of a life worked, of years contributed.

So when that recognition is made conditional on a hurdle many cannot reasonably cross, the question grows larger than the few extra units of currency. It becomes a question of who public systems are really built for.

When we design policies that require online forms, digital certificates, portals, and apps, are we quietly deciding that those who aren’t fluent in that world are less deserving, less visible, easier to forget?

The retirees looking at that notice know what it feels like to be on the wrong side of a system. They have stood in long lines, filled out countless forms by hand, waited by letterboxes for decisions stamped in official ink. The shift now is not that there are forms or requirements—that is familiar. The shift is that the human counter has been replaced by a digital gate.

A Choice Still to Be Made

Winter light fades early in February. By late afternoon, the streets grow soft and grey, headlights cutting narrow tunnels in the dusk. Somewhere, a printer hums in a quiet office, churning out reports that will say: digital transition successful, pension verification underway.

But success, in the true sense, cannot be measured only by how many certificates arrive through an online portal. It must also be measured by how many people are left behind.

It doesn’t have to be this way. There are alternatives—blended systems that honour both progress and presence. Mobile offices that visit villages and small towns. Phone support that doesn’t punish those without smartphones. Paper options for those who still trust paper most. Partnerships with libraries, local councils, and community centres that are not just symbolic, but empowered to submit certificates on behalf of those who cannot.

Digitalisation is not the villain; exclusion is. Technology can connect as easily as it can divide. The real test is not whether we can build portals, but whether we can ensure those portals don’t become walls.

For now, the notice remains taped to the post office door, corners curling slightly as winter air seeps in. Underneath the main text—under the formal, sterile lines about pension increases and missing certificates—a different message hangs invisibly, carried in the voices of those who read it:

“We are still here. We still matter. Don’t design a future in which we quietly disappear.”

At a Glance: Who Risks Missing the Pension Increase?

Behind the human stories, the pattern is painfully clear. Certain groups of retirees are far more likely to struggle with the new requirements than others.

Group	Main Obstacle	Risk
Retirees without internet access	No way to reach the online portal or app	High chance of missing the certificate deadline
Those living alone	No family support to help with digital forms	Likely to give up or delay action
Rural pensioners	Poor connectivity, distant service points	Limited access to assistance, slower processes
Those with poor eyesight or mobility	Difficulty using screens, traveling for help	Greater dependence on others, higher stress
Low‑income retirees	Unable to afford devices or data plans	Excluded from “online‑only” procedures

Frequently Asked Questions

Will every retiree automatically receive the pension increase from February 8?

No. The increase is conditional in many cases. Retirees who are required to submit a specific certificate and fail to do so—especially if it must be filed online—may not see the increase in their payment.

What is the “missing certificate” everyone is talking about?

It is an official document requested by the pension authority to confirm that certain conditions are still met (for example, current residence, marital status, or continued entitlement). Without it, the system may treat the case as incomplete and withhold the adjustment.

Why is the certificate submission often limited to online portals or apps?

Authorities argue that digital submissions reduce costs, speed up processing, and help prevent fraud. However, this approach can unintentionally exclude retirees who lack internet access, devices, or digital skills.

What can a retiree do if they don’t have internet access or a smartphone?

They can seek help from trusted family members, neighbours, or community organizations such as local councils, social services, libraries, or senior centres. In many places, staff or volunteers can assist with accessing the portal and uploading documents, even if this support is not always formally advertised.

Could a retiree lose their pension entirely if they don’t submit the certificate?

In most cases, the base pension is not immediately cut off, but adjustments or increases can be delayed, suspended, or withheld until the documents are received and processed. Over time, unresolved documentation issues can lead to more serious disruptions, so it is important not to ignore the request.

Why are so many retirees saying, “They know we don’t have internet access”?

Because many feel that the authorities are fully aware of the digital gap affecting older people, yet continue to design online‑only procedures. This creates a sense of being deliberately sidelined—of systems being built for the connected, not for everyone.

What changes would make the process fairer for retirees?

Offering both online and offline submission options, providing in‑person help at post offices or local offices, organizing mobile outreach to rural areas, and simplifying digital portals with large text and clear language would all reduce exclusion. At its core, fairness means designing systems that respect those who built the society long before the internet existed.