NIS completes data cleansing at Skeldon Estate

Sep 19, 2017 News

…to begin targeting other large employers soon

NIS moving ahead with its data cleansing exercise

The National Insurance Scheme (NIS) is moving ahead with its data cleansing programme. Thus far, it has completed the records of employees working or would have worked at the Skeldon Estate.
This is according to Public Relations Officer of the NIS, Diane Baxter.
Commenting on the progress of the data cleansing exercise, Baxter told Kaieteur News yesterday, that as it relates to the Guyana Sugar Corporation, the NIS is 90 per cent complete with the Albion Estate on the Corentyne Coast. She said that after Albion is completed, the NIS will target the Blairmont and Uitvlugt Sugar Estates.
Baxter explained that when the cleansing is done, an error report is printed and efforts are made to make the corrections. In some cases, she said, employees would need to be called in. She said that it is not often that the employee would be needed but if that is the case, GuySuCo assists in that regard. She said that for the future endeavours, the cooperation of both employers and employees will be needed in order to complete the data cleansing exercise and urged that all players assist in this regard.
She said that additional cleansing will be done at larger entities, both private and public. Further, as it relates to some companies not paying the NIS contributions for their workers, Baxter said that persons that have such complaints need only to contact NIS and report the name of the company and the NIS will do its own investigation.
She said that employees making such reports do not have to provide their names if they are afraid of being victimised by their employer.
The data cleansing exercise being undertaken by the NIS was announced last October at the entity’s 47th Anniversary celebrations at its Brickdam Office. The initiative was identified as one of the top priorities of the insurance scheme.
At that event, Chairman of the NIS Board, Dr. Surendra Persaud, had said that NIS numbers for contributors can be incorrect by a digit and names by a letter. As such, the data cleansing exercise was identified to regularise NIS’ records base.
Further, he said that by doing the cleansing, it will reduce the manual process by which employers have to do their work. He had said too, that NIS would have been finished with the entire GuySuCo by the first quarter of this year. However, the entity has not been able to reach this goal post.
Further, he said that in total, GuySuCo employs approximately 17,000 workers. The NIS Chairman had also said that when his entity is finished with the sugar industry, it will place its emphasis on the public sector that employs about 40,000 to 50,000 people. According to Dr. Persaud, GuySuCo, together with the public sector employees, represents about 50 per cent of the scheme’s current contributors.
The data cleansing exercise is one of the initiatives that the NIS is employing to bring itself into the digital age. This is in addition to the NIS wanting its contributors to make their payments online and for pensioners to receive their benefits through commercial banks.

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