Troubled NIS will be revamped – APNU+AFC tells public forum

Apr 14, 2015 News

---

Focusing on issues affecting the working class people and those who have retired, Presidential Candidate of the recently formed coalition, A Partnership for National Unity and Alliance for Change (APNU+AFC), David Granger yesterday said that the time has come for the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) to be revamped.
As he addressed a civil society forum hosted by the Guyana Women’s Roundtable (GWR) and the Guyana National Youth Council (GNYC) last evening, Retired Brigadier Granger said that the NIS was established 45 years ago to provide for the ordinary people of this country; many of who are complaining today.
He said that at present the institution is in “jeopardy of collapse because the money is being siphoned off into all sorts of harebrained schemes by the people in office.”
The Opposition Leader was at the time responding to the question of a concerned public servant who like many others, turned out at the Theatre Guild, Parade Street, Georgetown to use the opportunity to question the coalition’s candidates on what it intends to do for Guyana should it be voted into office on May 11.
As Granger and party executive, Catherine Hughes, were being grilled by citizens from all walks of life, Cathy Fowler, a public servant, stepped forward and voiced her concerns about NIS to the Opposition leaders.
She told the APNU+AFC representatives that she was recently at one of the NIS offices to make a claim for a pair of spectacles but was told that the “two years was not up.” The public servant told the Opposition Leaders that all she received from the $35,000 she spent was a little more than $6,000.
“So my question to you is what you’re planning? What system you have in place for that? Also there was a senior person who was there, in her seventies and the clerk told her that they couldn’t give her spectacles because her two years was not up,” she said.

According to the woman, the old woman asked whether there was anything the NIS could have done to assist her but was told in no uncertain terms that she needed to find the spectacle “the best way that she could.”
Granger said that the first thing that needs to be done with the NIS is change the Chairman of the Board of Directors.
The Opposition Leader is of the opinion that Dr. Roger Luncheon, who is the current Chairman, should retire from that position. Luncheon, who is also the Cabinet Secretary, has served as the NIS Chairman for over 20 years.
“We need to review the working of the entire National Insurance Scheme which has been used as a service cow to provide financial milk to this regime,” Granger said.
Granger said that the elderly need more medications, and it’s “a great paradox that old folks cannot have access to cheaper medication or spectacles or dentures. I know some people have access to dental treatment,” Granger said and the crowd laughed.
Granger said that there is certainly a need for the work of the NIS to be reviewed for it to be brought back in line with what it was intended to do when it came into being under the People’s National Congress (PNC) administration in 1969.
Hughes said that an overhaul of NIS was imperative. She said that just yesterday she received a complaint from a concerned citizen who was injured on his job and cannot work. She said the man has nervous problems and had suffered a broken back.
She said for the last three years, the man had been trying to collect some sort of compensation but to no avail.
The former Member of Parliament (MP) told the gathering that one of the things her party sees as important is existing technology to bring the NIS database up to date.
Hughes said that to date small companies are able to keep accurate records while NIS is one of the few institution that has a database “but cannot tell you whether you have paid all your contributions.”
She explained that the onus is then on citizens to go and prove their case but the NIS was never set up to operate that way.
“We need to change that completely. The other thing too is as you know is that there are several rules and regulations,” Hughes said. The APNU+AFC Executive said that she finds troubling that the NIS stipulates that you must have a preexisting condition before you could get benefits.
She said it was clear that when most persons started working they would not have had some of the conditions they expect to be dealt with by NIS in their older years.
Hughes maintained that it is the duty of the NIS to protect, prepare and give support to contributors should these eventualities arrive.
“So the entire system has to be revamped. The focus has not been on the citizen but on using the funds to fund projects and ideas of a very small, select group of people,” Hughes ended.
The Opposition plans come at a time when the NIS has garnered public interest for its modus operandi. News surfaced earlier this year that the state-owned GuySuCo owes NIS over $1.5B in contributions.
Meanwhile, it was last November that the NIS came under scrutiny when it was revealed that thousands of contributors owed millions of dollars by the Scheme cannot be identified.

---

---