Norma Forsythe is a grandmother who is single-handedly raising her six orphaned grandchildren on survivors’ benefits from her late husband’s contributions to NIS.
As for her benefits – well: As the saying goes, it is a long story.
When at age 60 she submitted a claim for old age pension she was told she had an approximate 200 contributions and was offered a payout of $5,500 (five thousand, five hundred dollars).
She refused that amount because she said that she had worked as a security guard with the Linden City Council for too long for that to be a true reflection of her contributions, so they searched and came up with another figure of 300 contributions.
She went to her former boss, who checked his own records and calculated that she had made in excess of 600 contributions.
When she confronted the staff at NIS they conceded that this latest figure was the correct one and promised her a grant for her contributions.  That was six years ago.  After spending much time, money and energy chasing after that promised payout, she has given up.
What has added to her troubles is that the home in Linden that her husband had died and left her had been burnt flat and she now shares a room with her grandchildren in a relative’s home in Wismar.
The following names have been changed at the request of the protagonists, but the situations are real.
Renuka applied for refunds for payment she had made for her glasses a couple of years ago, of which the optician’s fees were an approximate $15,000 because she had obtained the frames from a cheaper source. Although she had been told that a standard payout for glasses was $10,000, she only received a refund of six thousand dollars because they refused to take account of the cost of the frame as it had not been obtained from the optician, so they said they had calculated the payment on a percentage basis.
Earlier this year she was advised to wear transition lenses, with the complete cost of her glasses totalling $54,000.
She paid an advance of $20,000 and the remaining $34,000 when she uplifted her glasses.  Based on her previous experience with a percentage payout she thought that she would be refunded the major part of her expenditure, but when she submitted her claim she was told that she would only receive $10,000 via a cheque in the mail within a two-week period.
Over a month later, instead of a cheque, she received a notice that there was a mistake in the documents that she had submitted.
Again she had to ask for time off from work, pay the cost of transportation, then wait for a long period before being attended to by a clerk with an attitude.
The problem that they identified was that the receipt for the advance payment of $20,000 did not have a revenue stamp.
Knowing that getting additional time off to return to the optician for a revenue stamp to be placed on that receipt would have been a problem, Renuka enquired why the clerk to whom the receipts had been submitted had not identified this as a problem and whether the payment could not have been executed on the $34,000 receipt instead of causing her to waste so much time and unnecessary effort.
The clerk with an attitude haughtily told her that in that case she would be paid less money.  When Renuka enquired what would have been the original payment for the entire total of $54,000, she was haughtily informed that it would have been $10,000.
When she enquired what fraction she would be entitled to for the valid $34,000 receipt she was told that when a determination was made she would receive a cheque in the mail.
Although the initial date of submission of claim was April 12, to date – over two months later she has received no refund from NIS for her $54,000 glasses.
Terence had worked with a major engineering firm and had made contributions to NIS since he was a teenager.   When he contracted malaria the firm let him go with no benefits.  Months after, he took some blood tests at a private hospital and submitted a claim for the cost, whereupon he was informed that, once he is not employed and currently contributing, he would not be eligible for refunds for medical bills, despite all the years of paying NIS.
Gloria had reached sixty and submitted a claim for NIS pension, whereupon she was informed that only her contributions for her last two jobs – a total of 350, which disqualified her, were on the records of NIS.  Ten years of working in a state institution and over seven years of contributions from her employment in a reputable private firm were not found.  This was despite the fact that her last employers had obtained her NIS number from NIS records of her previous contributions.
The foregoing cases are real and I have examined the documentation.
In the course of my investigation, the most recurrent cases were contributions not found, which robbed many persons or their dependants of their well-earned pensions.
Many of the victims are simple persons who do not have a voice, and who are greatly intimidated by the well-dressed clerks with attitudes.
Either there is great corruption, massive fraud, or absolute inefficiency at NIS to cause so many persons to be robbed of their benefits.
NIS benefits are not favours conferred on beneficiaries.  It is the hard-earned money of the claimants, which allows the clerks with attitudes to breathe the rarified air of their egos as they perambulate through the corridors of their massive sense of self-importance in their well-tailored suits, their $5,000 per pair shoes, their $10,000 braidings, and their well-polished manicures.
Surely the banks of computers should record every contributor in the system turning 60 each day through a dateline process, with a simple check to see if that person or their dependants are still alive; with all the courtesies extended, without persons who have worked hard and faithfully contributed to their country being robbed of their rights and benefits by clerks with attitudes.
NIS needs some serious investigations to detect whether it is fraud or incompetence that is causing contributors to be robbed of their rights and benefits, which has caused many elderly persons to live in penury in the twilight of their years, after they have rendered a lifetime of service to the nation – and a percentage of their lifetime earnings to the nation’s coffers.
There is an ineradicable belief that employees of NIS are re-routing pension and other benefits into their own pockets, with claimants eventually giving up.
Whatever the reason for so many persons being robbed of their contributions, it is an abhorrence perpetrated against most often voiceless and elderly persons in their twilight years, and cursed is the country that robs its mothers and fathers.