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Christopher Ram offers free legal services to collapsing NIS
Legal practitioner Christopher Ram has offered free legal services to the National Insurance Scheme.
Ram said that his offer is being made in light of the difficulties highlighted as major factors prohibiting the institution from meaningfully carrying out its functions as the state insurance agency.
Christopher Ram
Ram was at the time speaking at a public forum which was recently held at the NIS Brickdam Office. Members of the public were invited to raise any queries they might have had about the operation of the scheme and the recommendation coming out of the Eighth Actuarial Report.
Members of the public were invited to view a presentation which outlined a review of the NIS operations over the past five years and to plan for the future. The gathering was also afforded the opportunity to voice their opinions and make suggestions for the future of the NIS itself and the recommendations of the independent assessor.
However, two notable recommendations— the increase in contributions percentage from 13 per cent to 15 per cent, and the raising of the age for persons to receive pension—were proposed. This caused unease in the crowd. Those two recommendations were met with much opposition by the gathering.
Ram, who was present at the forum having listened to the report about the failures and possible collapse of the Scheme, said that this situation in which the scheme finds itself is a peculiar and historic one.
“Guyana may be one of the few schemes where in an expanding economy the social security scheme is going broke. That is an unusual feature if not a record,” Ram affirmed.
He added that the possible failure and collapse may be because of some issues that the actuary, perhaps out of fear or diplomacy failed to highlight in his review.
“The problem facing this scheme includes the fact that for more than one decade, the Sixth and Seventh Actuarial reviews have been on the desk of the Board of Directors and the directors have done nothing. If we are expecting them to do something this time, we must be living in dreamland”.
Ram reiterated to the head table which included, The NIS General Manager Terry Thomas; Directors Denise Miller, Linda Gosai, Earl Welch and Chitraykha Dass; that until the question of governance is dealt with forthwith the scheme will never be able to move forward.
“This is not the case in this organization only. If you don’t have capable and competent governors you will always end up in disaster.
“It is not only the board; the Cabinet, the political parties, the trade union and the private sector have all sat back and done nothing as this scheme veered toward disaster” Ram stated.
“There is no solution. Having neglected to do what you should have done ten years ago is not going to get better performance. Then the scheme pumped $5.7 Billion into Clico and that is a very unfortunate omission by the actuary,” Ram added.
Ram said that he has on more than one occasion offered his services to the Scheme given his history of working with the organisation not only locally but overseas. However, to date the Scheme has not seen it fit to take up the offer despite the situation.
“I sympathize with the entire staff of the NIS…The board must be held accountable for every cent,” Ram added.
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