“Challenges of NIS have to be resolved now” – Chairman

…says Scheme does not have luxury of time to resolve challenges

The National Insurance Scheme (NIS) was on Monday reminded of the need to continue innovating by its Chairman, Ramesh Persaud, who emphasised that the organisation does not have the luxury of time to improve their services.
The NIS held its staff assembly and bursary awards, as part of its 54th anniversary, at its Sports Complex Ground on Carifesta Avenue. The Chairman was on hand to remind the Scheme of the importance of innovating.
“Society is significantly transformed and so will require the NIS to transform over time. Now, time is of the essence when it comes to doing things. Now we don’t have a decade or 15 years to resolve the challenges of NIS.”
“The challenges of NIS have to be resolved now, when a pensioner sits in front of you. Because that pensioner sits in front of you today, but may not sit in front of you tomorrow. That’s the reality of life,” the Chairman said.

At the same time, Persaud also made an appeal for the public to be more understanding of the confines the NIS currently works within. He noted that there are rules and regulations the Scheme has to follow and decisions are made based on those rules, not personalities.
“Now I know there are many individuals listening somewhere across the country, who might be of the view that we contribute, but they’re still not giving us our benefits. At this juncture I wish to highlight that you the employees, the management, even the Board, our powers are very limited. We make decisions based on the legislation, the regulations, the rules that have to be consistently applied.”
“Many times, we get beat up for not making decisions. But I’d like to tell you, some of those decisions we’d like to make but we can’t make them in the absence of certain facts and information, evidence and so forth, there’s a lot of persons out there who believe we have wide-ranging discretionary powers. That we could look at you, like you and give you your benefits. It doesn’t work like that,” he further said.
The anniversary celebration, which saw the subsequent attendance of Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh, involved a number of awards being presented to staff and the children of staff. In the latter case, bursary awards were presented for those children who performed well at the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA), Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC), and the Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Exams (CAPE). Mention was also made of the need for NIS to get updates on the lives of previous bursary awardees.
Earlier this month, President Dr Irfaan Ali had announced that a special secretariat will be created to handle the backlog of almost 10,000 tribunal matters at the National Insurance Scheme by the end of the year.
At the time he made the announcement during a live broadcast, there were approximately 10,000 open files at the NIS dealing with issues ranging from appeals, claims, queries, investigations, and other tribunal matters. In order to resolve these pending cases, President Ali had said that he has instructed that a proactive approach be taken to have this done over the coming months.
“We’re gonna develop a Special Secretariat and a projectised format to bring to an end or to bring to closure, these 10,000 files before the end of the year. So, we will be back in real-time. So, the NIS will be working from now to the end of the year to close these files,” he had said.
On the other hand, the Guyanese leader outlined that some of these pending NIS cases are for persons in the Guyanese diaspora and so steps will also be taken to address those at outreaches to be held in the United States and Canada next month.
Since taking office in August 2020, the PPP/C Administration has successfully closed more than 4000 historical cases, both nationally and in the diaspora. During the presentation of Budget 2023, it was revealed the Insurance Scheme had disposed of nearly half of its backlog in some two years.
Senior Finance Minister, Dr Ashni Singh had reported that as of August 2020, the backlog of claims outstanding and on query was 20,106. However, by December 2022, this backlog was reduced to 10,902. Further, of the 1,362,734 suspended and invalid numbers existing in the database, the Scheme was able to resolve 1,103,835 in 2022. (G3)