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Dec 13, 2013 News
Head of the Presidential Secretariat, Dr. Roger Luncheon has sought to discredit reports that the National Insurance Scheme is in a state of crisis. Luncheon was at the time addressing the media at his weekly press briefing held at the Office of the President.
Luncheon admitted that the scheme was experiencing some problems but it’s nowhere near a “crisis”. According to Luncheon exaggerating and proffering fallacious statements such as it being in dire crisis, “is downright uncharitable and is foisting all sorts of wrong impressions in the public domain.”
Luncheon further stated that there are certain indicators that constitute a crisis; however, the NIS has been paying out billions of dollars every month in benefits religiously without being harassed or cajoled.
At a recent press briefing, APNU’s David Granger had called for the PPP/C to reform the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) to avoid it from collapsing. According to Granger, the scheme is in a crisis, as he pointed to records which indicate that the entity had a deficit of $371 million in 2011 for the first time in more than four decades.
Granger had stressed that contributions collected over the period January to August 2013 were approximately $7.754 billion, while total expenditure over the same period was approximately $9.120 billion.
To support his claim of a crisis, Granger pointed to the eighth actuarial review in 2011, which indicated that NIS was rapidly approaching a “crisis stage”. It was contended that if nothing is done to rescue the scheme, it can become exhausted in less than 10 years, and that the Scheme faces a plethora of problems, including heavy political control.
Granger had stated that PPP policymakers who have dominated the NIS Board for the past two decades have not responded to the changing socio-economic conditions and deteriorating finances.
Additionally, APNU is contending that the NIS has indulged in risky investments as it alluded to the scheme’s investments of US$30 million in the bankrupted CLICO and US$10 million in the Berbice River Bridge.
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