The National Insurance Scheme (NIS) has been recording successive deficits over the past few years. This is according to the entity’s General Manager, Holly Greaves, who appeared before the Parliamentary Social Services Committee (PSSC) on Monday.
NIS General Manager Holly Greaves
According to Greaves, NIS has had to deal with the effects of a consistently aging and retiring population; a situation not likely to have been helped by the firing of thousands of sugar workers under the coalition Government.
“For the last three years we have recorded deficits, but what we are doing now is (trying) to get into some (of) those areas that we have contributors and undertake feasibility studies to see how best we can increase our contributing population,” she informed the committee.
When it comes to the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), Greaves revealed that it may come down to litigation in order for NIS to get some $250 million in interest owed on a $1.5 billion debt the corporation had previously cleared.
This raises serious questions, as an employer is responsible for remitting money from individual workers’ salaries to NIS. If this was not being done, however, a likely question is: where was the money going all this time prior to the clearance of the debt?
Economic Advisor to the Opposition, Dr Peter Ramsaroop, predicted in February that the NIS would “go belly up” – a direct result of the management of GuySuCo.
According to Dr Ramroop, “The President, or his Finance Minister, clearly did not think through the long-term impact of shutting down an entire industry (and) placing thousands on the breadline at the same time.”
According to Dr Ramsaroop, “NIS is already in trouble. (It is) no way near to being a fiscally solid institution with its expenditure outstripping revenue in recent years, along with (it having made) some bad investments.”
He explained that the institution currently spends more than it earns, and has had to regularly tap into its reserves to make basic payments. “So I am extremely worried that when the euphoria of the part-severance payment wears off and life sets in, what the long-term economic effects will be.”
Dr Ramsaroop said the prevailing social circumstances were ripe for a large number of the laid-off sugar workers and their dependent family members in the near future – say three to five years – to make claims on the NIS, since they are of the belief that their contributions would have been made by GuySuCo.
“Remember, we are talking about medical benefits that these now sick and unemployed sugar workers will be looking to claim,” the financial analyst said, as he predicted widespread chaos in the near future when thousands of workers turn up to make claims at the NIS only to realise they have “nothing to get”.
He informed Guyana Times that, based on available data, GuySuCo owes NIS in excess of $1.5 billion in contributions from sugar workers.
