Dear Editor,
IT is a national disgrace that the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) is often forced to list the names of employers who fail to remit NIS deductions from their workers’ pay, as well as the employers’ contributions.

I contend that if employers who deduct PAYE and NIS contributions from workers’ salaries then keep it for their own use for whatever length of time are committing fraud, which is a criminal offence. It is incomprehensible to me that so many fine companies and businesspersons in Guyana seem willing to steal or attempt to stealing their employees’ NIS contributions and face public shame and ridicule. Are these employers not human beings with feelings for fellow human beings, especially those who are at or beneath the poverty line? What happens to these poor employees if there are accidents or sudden medical emergencies and they find out belatedly that they are not covered by NIS? Lives and families could be destroyed.

I know personally that some of the persons listed by NIS for withholding workers’ contributions find the funds to maintain multiple homes and ‘wives’. When the Bible refers to people who eat human flesh, I wonder if this is a metaphorical reference to such heartless people. It causes me to wonder what else they are doing. People who steal NIS contributions will also be stealing Pay As You Earn (PAYE) income tax deductions, corporate taxes and VAT. Government needs to investigate them for that.

I saw three security services on a recent list. My information is that some of these businesses have contacts within the NIS and actually dare workers to go to the scheme and complain about the non-payment of NIS deductions. When they return, the owner asks the employees mockingly what they were told, knowing quite well that they would have had little success.

As far as I am aware, the commissioner of police has even more power in the security industry than NIS and the tax department themselves and can shut down a security company immediately for breach of tax laws or NIS laws. I see a business school failed to pay its contributions and even a big business. Do the government of Guyana and the NIS board know why? I highlighted the reason two years ago, and two years before that and a few years before that. It is simple: breaching the NIS laws does not result in criminal charges, even though it involves acts of theft, which is a criminal offence. The NIS is in the habit of going to employers and begging them to pay; they allow the employer to pay their outstanding sums without interest and then they grant such businesses compliance certificates, although they owe outstanding monies and the promises to pay are never kept.

Deducting money to remit to NIS and failing to do so is fraud. This must be prosecuted as criminal offences. If it will take some time to enact the required criminal laws to support NIS, there is the route of private criminal court action. I am no legal master, just a layman, but I know that it can be done.

With appropriate laws in place, NIS could seize employers’ properties and watch the money roll in. If they do not have properties, rework the laws so that NIS can go after the properties of the general secretaries and the heads of such businesses and watch the money roll in. This is why NIS is suffering. They lack money; people are not paying. NIS and the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) pressure people like me who are fully compliant and operate in an honest and principled way, because they don’t have the gall or the capacity or wisdom to figure out how to go after the real culprits. As I did in the past, I am offering my service to show the NIS and GRA how to recover these funds for a very expensive fee. I must be paid as a consultant or advisor; I can’t work for free. The fee I am asking is $1 per year. I am offering this for the good of my country and the people of my country.
Regards
Roshan Khan Snr