“Remedy the problems now” – Finance Minister tells NIS to address missing contributions

…reminds employers of legal obligations

Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh charged the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) to be proactive in identifying and addressing missing contributions from employers.
At the end of every year, registered employers are entitled to automatically receive a statement from NIS of all the contributions made on behalf of their employees throughout the year.

Delivering feature remarks at the 57th Anniversary General Assembly of NIS on Wednesday, Dr Singh urged the management of the scheme to ensure that this practice is upheld.
“Please ensure that every employer gets a statement at the end of the year of the persons for whom they paid contributions and the number of contributions paid for those persons. And where you see there are gaps, please remedy those gaps immediately,” he posited.
In fact, the Finance Minister says that the scheme can use technology to identify and rectify those missing contributions.
“We now have technology that allows us to interrogate and process data… Your team, Holly [Greaves, General Manager of NIS], can immediately run a query to see in every agency, employees that were at work in January, February [and then in] November and December, but for whom 52 contributions were not made,” he asserted.

Detect missing contributions
According to Singh, there is nothing stopping the NIS technical team from using the technology to detect missing contributions and then passing those onto the enforcement department to go after.
“We don’t have to wait until these people reach age 60 or until we have some arrears collection exercise, or some big enforcement exercise, or until this becomes an issue that you have to take the employer to court. Run the report now. Use data analytics now to identify immediately which employers are the delinquent… Remedy the problems now, so we don’t have to wait.”
The Finance Minister went on to note that this is also the responsibility of the NIS Board to ensure employers make the required contributions on behalf of their staff.
Moreover, Dr Singh reminded us that employers are legally obligated to pay NIS contributions. He also appealed to employers to ensure that they are registered and are making contributions on behalf of their employees.
“I do not want you to wait for the NIS inspectors to turn up at your door to enforce or for an employee to come and claim a benefit and then discover that they cannot access their benefit… We don’t want to get there. If we have to do it, we’re going to do it, but we prefer not to be in that situation,” Singh stressed.
He also urged employees to also play their part in ensuring that their contributions are up to date rather than waiting until their retirement to then get their affairs in order. The same is applied for self-employed persons, he noted.
Singh pointed out that everyone is entitled to accessing their contribution statement, adding that they can also utilise tools such as the online platform on the NIS website to check on their contributions.
“At least once a year, request your NIS record and make sure your contributions are up to date. And if your contributions are not up to date, go to your employer… Fix it now; don’t wait until your 59th birthday to then scramble…”
“It may look like a punitive thing now, but it’s not a punitive thing when a medical emergency arises and a claim has to be made, and you then discover that your contributions are not up to date. And it’s certainly not a punitive thing when you hit age 60 and you turn up expecting to receive that NIS pension only to discover that contributions were not being paid over on your behalf,” he asserted.
According to the Finance Minister, many of the cases with missing contributions involved employers from decades ago that are no longer in existence, thus making it difficult for NIS to access records.
These calls by Minister Singh come as the NIS has seen its contributor base grow by nearly 80,000 persons, or 41 per cent, in the last five years.

Be more proactive
But even as he lauded NIS for how it has responded to this increase in contributors, the Finance Minister contended that there are still many persons out there working and not making NIS contributions.
To this end, Dr Singh charged the NIS to be more proactive in ensuring that employers and employees are registered with the scheme and that the former makes the necessary contributions on behalf of their staff.
“We cannot be reactive. We cannot only sit down [in the office] and wait for people to walk through the door. We have to go out there and sensitise people through public education…[and] public outreach.”
In fact, he pointed out that this is among the reasons that the Government has established NIS offices in the various Administrative Regions across Guyana.
“We don’t have regional offices just so that people can enjoy the comfort of sitting in their offices but so that within their respective catchment areas, they will go out and ensure that everybody who is working is participating and contributing [to NIS],” the Minister posited.