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Electronic conversion of NIS unlikely by December 31st
Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon
The December 31st deadline set by cabinet for the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) to convert all its records of Contributors whether self employed or employed to their electronic system, might not be met.
This is according to Head of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS) Dr. Roger Luncheon who outlined that the two outstanding components are yet to be rectified to confirm with the electronic conversion.
What that means, according to Luncheon, is that right now “benefits are compiled from the electronic database and not in the totality of payments made. So if you have a portion of your contributions/records off the electronic database, more often than not, unless great diligence is applied, it wouldn’t be computed, it wouldn’t be used in computing benefits.”
Luncheon conceded that this “has brought the NIS into considerable disfavour with the general public, particularly with Contributors, when specifically at the age of retirement, contributions are missing and the contribution on pension benefits would then go into disarray.”
He assured however “that once the paper records exists and can be converted electronically, whatever benefits accrue, no matter how long ago it was, those benefits would be made available to the Contributor. That is what drives this process.”
Luncheon used himself as an example and said that if “I in 1989 got pension benefits under-calculated because 100 contributions were lost in paper records and were not on the NIMS [Network Information Management System], when those 100 contributions are found and placed on the NIMS by the 31st of December, the Scheme will call in Luncheon and say ‘sir, sorry your contribution records have now been corrected. This is the real number of contributions, this is the pension that you should have received, here is a cheque for the difference.’ You could never lose where this system is concerned.”
Luncheon mentioned with respect to the electronic conversion, verification is all that is left since data entry has been rectified.
“It is the verification to ensure the accuracy of the information that has been placed on the data system. This is the more challenging of the two components and one that Cabinet recognizes the Scheme would be hard pressed to deliver by the 31st of December” he said.
According to Luncheon, the verification difficulties are occurring in those local offices where the sugar estates are located.
“So Berbice, the West Coast and the Upper East Coast, these are areas where verification of contributions are the most challenging of all of the activities where abiding with the 31st of December deadline is concerned.”
He emphasized however that Cabinet “has been insisting and rejected any extension, and Cabinet has resolved to make available all the resources human, technical, financial the resources necessary for the successful completion of this mission.”
On the question of financial resources, Luncheon was asked to state how much money was spent on the electronic conversion of the NIS contributions; his response was that it would be difficult for the management of NIS to get the figure.
He said further that “I know what the structure is but in terms of the technology that supports it and staff that service it, it is a lot of money.”
According to Luncheon, NIMS plays a vital role in the NIS, even going on to say that “fundamentally, no NIMs no National Insurance Scheme.”
As such the HPS said the “recognition of its criticality leads us to just plough money into modernization and its operations. So I would hesitate to put a figure on it, just to comment in a general way to say the cost …will have to be borne were the Scheme to continue to discharge its statutory responsibilities.”
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