The Story within the Story…A scary situation for old folks; a priority for this Government

May 28, 2017 Features / Columnists

By Leonard Gildarie
It is a scary thought. Imagine waking up at 60, unable to work and with no children or relatives to

Leonard Gildarie

depend on. You have not been paying your income taxes and contributions to the National Insurance Scheme (NIS). How do you upkeep yourself? Where do you find the money to survive? It is a harsh reality and a deeply worrying one for me and I know, too, for thousands of Guyanese.
I like touring the countryside of Guyana. We are a simple people who toil day in and day out to make ends meet. Our rice and cash crop farmers have been doing an admirable job of lugging it to the fields daily, rain or shine, drought or flood, battling poor prices and a constant glut in the market.
Despite the warning signs that new ways to plant, harvest and market the produce will have to be found in a hurry, we have kept up the old ways, much to our detriment. It is not unusual to see fields of greens wasted as prices were too low to even pick them.
We can criticize all we want, but the demands of consumers have changed.
There are more family members working now, more single parents out there.
Many of them don’t have the time to peel a catahar or grate a coconut. Some children wake up at 4am to hitch a ride with an uncle who is heading to work at 6am, just to meet to school. Everybody is hustling.
There is a huge demand for food that is ready and easy to cook. Ask the supermarkets about the sale of those nicely packaged greens and they will tell you the purchasing patterns have changed.
Many of our farmers live from crop to crop. Many of them are caught in a vicious cycle of debt to millers and the bank, and outdone by the challenges of the weather. The majority of them never took the time or simply did not have enough to pay NIS or to the Guyana Revenue Authority.
Some that did have the money never bothered, as they don’t fully comprehend the pitfalls of not paying.
Thousands more Guyanese, including labourers like carpenters, drivers, vendors, barbers, etc, never bothered with taxes and NIS. Many of them will collect the old age pension, but will not qualify for NIS because they never paid.
How many senior citizens do we know who have no income and are highly dependent on relatives to eat and sleep? Many of them are forced to do menial jobs around the yard to earn their keep and suffer insults and abuse, in the process.
Both the predecessors of GRA and NIS have failed to come up with a proper plan to raise awareness about the need to pay the dues. Yes, they will argue about television programmes and Facebook pages. How about the officials in each district launching awareness campaigns in their areas?
Fortunately, Government has been paying an old age pension. It had started to rise under the previous administration and currently stands at $19,000 monthly (US$90). According to Government, over 50,000 of our senior citizens will benefit this year.
This translates to almost $1B in spending monthly, or more than $12B annually. This is a significant sum.
I say we start working backwards. NIS is reeling from a drop in contributions. While it has billions in its accounts, on the long term, it will not survive if the situation is not corrected, pronto. Its enforcement activities have to rock the boat.
The entity is needed in Guyana. We are moving to oil now. We are establishing a sovereign wealth fund to cater for rainy days instead of spending wildly the proceeds we are expecting.
The reality is that it would be foolhardy for any populace to expect the administration of the day to dole out monies from its oil and other proceeds that will be in the fund, as a support directly to the people.
It is a two-way street. We would be heading down the road of a number of oil-rich countries like Trinidad and Venezuela which failed to save for the hard times, but instead in the short term rewarded its people.
We have to fix the system of taxes and NIS, and work from there.
It will be a highly unpopular call, I know. Nobody likes taxes. But we do like driving on good roads and when the rain falls, we look forward to the drainage system working.
Where does the money come from? With GRA saying that 80 percent of the taxes are coming from 20 percent of the working population, we have a serious problem.
Coming back to senior citizens, we seem to be ashamed or simply don’t care. We have refused to talk openly about the helpless situation many of our parents and grandparents find themselves in. Many of them have children and grands living overseas, who send a small piece from time to time.
Some have returned from overseas to retire here after working there for years. They are the fortunate ones as they collect a pension monthly. It is sent to their bank accounts.
We have a population of approximately 750,000 persons. Some 50,000 will benefit from old age pension. The social services are being affected, including demand at our hospitals.
So yes, the administration has its work cut out. There is nothing quite like educating the people.