WHATEVER went wrong with the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) defies decisive diagnosis.So healing is elusive. But here are some symptoms officials can point to: almost half of all local employers do not pay employees NIS which they deduct from workers’ salaries as the law demands.
The deep-seated disorder is known to be contagious in the public sector too since many of the biggest defaulting employers work for the government: the Guyana Police Force (GPF), the Ministry of Education (MoE), the Ministry of Public Health (MPH), the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) and the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA).
The ailment batters some NIS employees resolve as many contributors also know, from personal experience, the hardships they face from them when trying to get their legal benefits.
The ingrained disorder is not confined to the coastal areas as Minister of Social Protection, Volda Lawrence found out on a recent two-day visit to Lethem, Region 9, (Upper Takutu/Upper Essequibo).
Affected employees and retirees transformed the upper flat of the Arapaima Primary School into a medical doctor’s clinic with complaints of viruses contracted from dealing with the NIS.
Emmanuel Ribeiro, who retired as a Ministry of Education employee since 2008, has never received his benefits. His contributions have vanished, he was told.
Another former employee of the now Ministry of Public Infrastructure (then Ministry of Public Works) who worked there from 1964 – 1985 said that to date he too “never received” any his NIS retirement entitlements.
Minister within the Ministry of Public Infrastructure Annette Ferguson, who heard his complaint first-hand, and saw his weakened condition promised a thorough investigation.
Retiree Dereck Williams had his life upturned when told that his life certificate which he surrendered at the Region Nine office to forward to the NIS headquarters in Georgetown, disappeared, according to claims by (Upper Takutu/Upper Essequibo) NIS officials.
“There are many (more) like us,” Williams said.
The problems besetting the NIS “are an issue we have inherited (and) it goes wide and deep,” Minister Lawrence said.
The bewilderment about their NIS deductions is not confined to past and present contributors. So too are NIS executives.
“We are (still) trying to find out what went wrong,” especially between 1989 and 1998 said William Orin Boston, NIS Assistant General Manager (Operations).
As it turns out, since his appointment two years ago, Boston has been administering all forms of medication without apparent success.
The ongoing physical examination of the NIS is throwing up evidence suggesting that many things “went wrong” beginning many years ago among many institutions, including many government ministries as indicated earlier.

NOT REMITTING DEDUCTIONS
Boston is finding out that lots of state bodies and private sector agencies, without fail, have been deducting NIS payments from employees but have been consistently neglecting to remit the sums as required by law.
The NIS official is also learning that scribes in various institutions routinely make elementary errors such as providing incorrect NIS numbers; spelling employees names wrong and providing employees’ names without their NIS numbers.
Their mistakes are costly –both financially and in lost time – to contributors who have to endure unacceptably long delays, ever-changing explanations and worst, deferred expectations.
Doreen Nelson, NIS General Manager, although pained by the perennial irritations suffered by its clients, remains upbeat that there is a silver lining behind the darkened cloud.
“Never lose hope” Nelson’s urges her 118,548 contributors.
But the NIS Board of Directors might be standing in the way of Nelson’s optimistic message.
The Board has been blocking retooling of the NIS. It has been obdurate in resisting calls to boost NIS staff to man the 215,000 square mile Republic.
Despite shifts in economic activity away from agriculture into the extractive industry, the NIS Board is stymieing efforts to acquire the first boat to service the country’s sprawling interior communities.
In addition, with the swell in the ranks of self-employed persons and bloating figures of tax evaders, the NIS Board has rebuffed calls to add more staff to complement the inadequate 43 inspectors expected to overlook all of Guyana.
Then, the critical Compliance Department has just three vehicles: a 22-year old car assigned to Berbice which is expected to serve from Orealla to Mahaicony; those working the vast area spanning Melanie (ECD) to Lethem also have a solitary vehicle; and the Georgetown to Yarrowkabra stretch also has one vehicle that is 17 years old.
“These are my dilemma,” said Boston.
But his quandary deepens.

UNDERSTAFFED
The 43 over-worked and heavily-criticised NIS inspectors routinely also have to double as compliance officials and triple-up as NIS prosecutors in court. To exacerbate the issue, the Board of Directors has decided not to hire new workers for 2016 although some departments are glaringly understaffed.
Boston has a message for NIS Directors: “give me what I need”.
This includes additional inspectors, a Queries Unit, a Debt-Management Unit and a Legal Department.
The lack of recoupment of NIS payments cannot continue. “We have not been capturing more than 60 per cent of the active employers’ population,” Boston complained.
This means that some 40 per cent of employers are do not pay worker NIS contributions. “This is worrisome but it hinges on the resource element,” Boston said.
He said NIS could have been better positioned if the institution was linked with the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) when it was improved and the Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN) system when it was introduced.
“This is the external help that NIS needed,” Boston explained.

GOING AFTER DEFAULTERS
Despite internal institutional weaknesses and external challenges, the NIS has been waging a vigorous campaign against defiant defaulters which also include some 6,507 employers and the 9, 017 self-employed.
At the end of September the NIS had some 130 outstanding criminal and civil court cases as part of a wider initiative to recover some $130 million owed by defaulters.
NIS recently won a court case against the Mayor and City Council (M&CC) and City Hall has paid the first tranche of the $70-odd million it owes the institution.
Unlike the M&CC, several recalcitrant employers have been defying judgment against by the court and the NIS is taking further steps to recover outstanding sums by levying on their fixed and moveable assets.
But the lack of storage facilities is making that difficult, Boston said.
Currently, there are more than 800 cases of identified defaulters stretching as far back as 1989. Boston disclosed that while some persons are in hiding, others are dead and some defaulting businesses no longer exist.
He said it could no longer be “business as usual,” between the NIS and employers. For the institution to survive and contributors’ future remain secure, “there must be compliancy for the viability”.
Minister Lawrence chastised several employers for jeopardising contributors’ welfare by their continuous failures.
To add to their lapses, institutions such as S&S Enterprise and RK Security Services, among many others also breach other regulations, according to residents’ complaints and Lawrence’s revelations.
S&S Enterprise denies workers lunch breaks; R.K Security Services withholds a month’s salary for workers and under-pay those who are on leave, a fact Mr Terrence Boston, who defended the latter firm at the public forum, was forced to admit.
“Employers can’t do what they want… we recently had cause to sanction Mr Roshan Khan (of RK Security Services) for breaching the labour laws,” Lawrence told the audience.
She reminded them that employers are not allowed to implement only those labour regulations that favour them.
This was also Nelson’s surgically precise message to frustrated NIS contributors.
She reminded that there are ‘over-the-counter’ activities for NIS ‘patients’ such as demanding that employers “prove that the moneys were remitted to the government. Ask for a schedule that proves I have paid my NIS contributions”.

WRITE THE GENERAL MANAGER
She is encouraging residents in outlying areas who feel frustrated by their local offices to “write the General Manager”. She is promising to provide medication swiftly to remedy their complaints. Additionally, aggrieved contributors “can come at any time and ask for a schedule” of their deductions, Nelson assured.
She was appeasing scores of upset NIS clients whose deductions are apparently lost. “Missing contributions do not mean non-payment,” she said.
Nevertheless, the responsibility rests heavily with employers and their clerks to be “more thorough and accurate with the information they send to the NIS offices to prevent the agitation, uncertainty and anger frequently experienced by contributors,” Nelson said.
A dossier on the ailment afflicting the NIS was prepared but the diagnosis could not be made public following the decision of the then embattled-President Mr Donald Ramotar to prorogue the 10th Parliament.
Sometimes amputation and not medication saves the lives of terminally-ill patients. In the case of what is happening in Region 9, Lawrence is leaning heavily towards the surgical procedure.
“We will be back… in full force” in Region 9, Minister Lawrence assured anxious workers and retirees.
She vowed that following investigations “if all the officers have to be removed then so be it,” Lawrence vowed.
Dereck Williams echoed the sentiments of almost all the residents at the public meeting at Lethem when he said, “something is wrong with the NIS officials up here… the reception we get from the NIS employees isn’t nice”.
According to Boston, Lethem is an “evolving office” which will be upgraded with more equipment and infrastructure.
“The scheme has lots of potential but we have to get these things right,” said Boston.
“It is a privilege to work with the NIS. It is a unique organisation. It is the only one of its kind in Guyana,” Boston said.