Withholding workers’ NIS contributions is a criminal offence – Govt warns employers

In light of a recent case, wherein the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) has appealed a court ruling ordering it to pay an employee his pension even though contributions were not remitted for him, the Government is reminding employers of the criminal offence they commit by not remitting their employees’ deductions.
In November, the High Court ruled that the NIS must pay 60-year-old Shariff Zainul his old age pension. The former Toolsie Persaud employee had contended that he is eligible for pension after making over 750 contributions. However, the NIS had contended that a number of years’ worth of contributions had not been remitted on his behalf.

The NIS has since appealed that ruling, and on Tuesday, the Attorney General, Senior Counsel Anil Nandlall, had cause to debunk claims that his chambers had filed an appeal. However, he explained why NIS needed to appeal the High Court ruling, noting that if the ruling is allowed to stand, the floodgates would be opened.
“If this decision is allowed to go unchallenged, then it would open a flood gate, where everyone will now sue the NIS and not their employers; and NIS would have to pay, although NIS did not receive any remission of the payments actually made by the employees to the employers,” he explained.
“So that is the issue. It’s not about going after the gentleman’s entitlement to NIS; it is about every employee whose payments were deducted by the employers (but) not transmitted to the NIS will now have a claim against the NIS. It will bankrupt the NIS,” Nandlall said.

Warning
The Attorney General went on to sound a warning to employers, reminding them of the need to remit to the scheme all NIS contributions from their employees, lest they be charged with a criminal offence.

“We know, you know, that there are many employers who are actually deducting NIS payments from employees but are not remitting those payments to the NIS. And that is an offence! That is a criminal offence under the laws! The employers in this case should have been made a party to the proceedings. They should have been joined as a party; but that did not happen,” the AG detailed.
In the case he filed against the NIS, Zainul, a former carpenter with Toolsie Persaud Limited (TPL), detailed that he had been employed in an insurable capacity constantly from 1969 to 2001, and that he had made more than 750 contributions to the NIS, making him eligible for the Scheme’s old age pension.
He said that, on attaining the age of 60, he made an application to NIS for the payment of his old age pension, but was informed by the agency that he did not qualify for the payment of pension because he did not have sufficient contributions. He said he was informed further that there was no record of any contributions for him for the period 1992 to 2000, and that he had amassed only 374 contributions, which entitled him to the payment of an old age grant.
Zainul said he had appealed to the Appeal Tribunal against the NIS decision not to pay him a pension, and had been advised by the NIS to obtain his record of employment from TPL. His attempts to do this proved futile, and he was then advised to obtain testimonies from two of his former work colleagues who had worked with him during the unaccounted-for period of his employment.
To this end, he obtained a letter from the former Personnel Officer of TPL, Krishendatt Sahadeo, and statutory declarations from two former employees of the company attesting to the fact that he had been employed with TPL for the years in question. Moreover, pay slips from TPL evidencing NIS deductions for the years 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, and 1998 were submitted.
He said he had submitted those documents to the Tribunal, but was informed orally that his appeal was still unsuccessful. No reasons for the Tribunal’s decision were provided to him, but he was told that his total contributions had been updated to 453.
In her ruling, Justice Damone Younge declared that the letter submitted by Zainul’s former Personnel Officer at TPL, Sahadeo, substantiating that he worked with the company from May 4, 1992 to December 31, 2000, is “good and sufficient proof of his employment there”.
Considering this, Justice Younge had ruled that Zainul was entitled to be credited with the 354 contributions for that period, which TPL failed to remit to the NIS as is required under the law. She therefore found that he is qualified for NIS pension. (G3)