THE National Insurance Scheme (NIS) Board of Directors appeared before the Economic Services Committee of Parliament yesterday, to explain issues and work being done. The meeting took place in the Parliament Chamber of Public Buildings, Brickdam, Georgetown, with People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Member of Parliament (MP), Ms. Gail Teixeira in the chair.
Other members of the Committee present were People’s National Congress Reform/One Guyana MP, Mr. Dave Danny and PPP/C MPs, Reverend Kwame Gilbert, Mr. Dharamkumar Seeraj and Mr. Farouk Khan.
Among those representing the NIS, were its Chairman, Dr. Roger Luncheon; Acting General Manager, Ms. Doreen Nelson and Assistant General Manager, Operations, Mr. Terry Thomas.
About reports that there is a new policy of reimbursement for health claims requiring persons to pay and then claim from NIS, its representatives said there is a Sickness Benefit Medical Care reimbursement system that requires the qualified contributor to incur the associated expenses and recover from the scheme at approved rate.
Touching on the process of computerisation and how it is moving ahead, Nelson said all NIS offices are now computerised and they have done quite a lot of work in terms of putting the contributions into the computers.
She disclosed that NIS has just started printing the first set of statements for 2009 for sending to those employers whose contribution schedules for that year have already been fully entered.
Alluding to concerns by sugar workers about their contributions, Nelson said discussions have been ongoing and some of the matters have been resolved but there are problems with other of the schedules for years gone by.
She sad several of earlier years, particularly from GuySuCo were submitted with just names and no NIS numbers which are used to identify persons and that has compounded the problems being faced.
“These types of things affect us when we don’t get the full set of information coming on the schedule and those sorts of things take time,” Nelson stated.
Identity
She said such schedules have been sent straight to the employers to let them clarify the identity and the records are merged to get the full statement.
Nelson noted, too, that the contribution schedules are sent to employees through their employers and there were prior discussions about getting them directly to the employees instead but there are difficulties, such as the changing of addresses.
She said NIS is seeking ways and means to put in place a system to annually and regularly have persons go to the offices and make known any changes in personal data.
Nelson assured that self-employed persons can also ask for their statements and explain that their records have been updated, showing a receipt that indicates payment has been made to NIS.
She said, at the beginning of each year, a delinquency list is printed for employers to see where there are no payments.
Luncheon conceded that there are some futuristic interventions that have been looked at, such as access to information and the ability to deliver it when an employee or contributor visits any local office, by looking at the website where one can access the records and provide an update on contributions.
But, right now, he said NIS has to belabour the reality and work on the current issues facing it.