Dear Editor,
It is a national disgrace that the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) is often forced to list the names of employers who fail to remit NIS deductions from their workers’ pay, as well as the employers’ contributions.
I contend that if employers who deduct PAYE and NIS contributions from workers’ salaries then keep it for their own use for whatever length of time are committing fraud, which is a criminal offence.
It is incomprehensible to me that so many companies and businesspersons in Guyana seem willing to attempt to steal their employees’ NIS contributions and face public shame and ridicule.
Are these employers not human beings with feelings for fellow human beings, especially those who are at or beneath the poverty line? What happens to these poor employees if there are accidents or sudden medical emergencies and they find out belatedly that they are not covered by NIS? Lives and families could be destroyed.
I know personally some of the persons listed by NIS for withholding workers’ contributions. People who steal NIS contributions will also be stealing Pay as you Earn (PAYE) Income Tax deductions, corporate taxes and VAT. Government needs to investigate them for that.
As I am writing, security guards in Regions Five and Six are protesting another company.
Can you imagine the thinking of these people who indulge is such criminal conspiracies and skulduggery?
Breaching the NIS laws does not result in criminal charges even though it involves acts of theft, which is a criminal offence.
The NIS is in the habit of going to employers and begging them to pay; they allow the employer to pay their outstanding sums without interest and then they grant such businesses compliance certificates although they owe outstanding monies and the promises to pay are never kept.
Deducting money to remit to NIS and failing to do so is fraud. This must be prosecuted as criminal offences. If it will take some time to enact the required criminal laws to support NIS, there is the route of private criminal court action.
With appropriate laws in place, NIS could seize the employers’ properties and watch the money roll in. If they do not have properties, rework the laws so that NIS can go after the properties of the general secretaries and the heads of such businesses and watch the money roll in.
This is why NIS is suffering. They lack money; people are not paying. NIS and the Guyana Revenue Authority pressure people like me who are fully compliant and operate in an honest and principled way because they don’t have the gall or the capacity or wisdom to figure out how to go after the real culprits.
Sincerely,
Roshan Khan Snr
