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Kaieteur News
Kaieteur News Printed and Published by National Media & Publishing Company Ltd. 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown, Georgetown, Guyana. Publisher: GLENN LALL Editor: Adam Harris Tel: 225-8465, 225-8491. Fax: 225-8473, 226-8210
EDITORIAL
Is the NIS committing suicide? Notwithstanding all the protestations from the Chairman and the Board of the National Insurance Scheme (NIS), the latter has been in trouble for quite some time. Last December, after the eighth actuarial review, which simply reiterated concerns made four years before in the review of that year, the Chairman, Dr Luncheon, in his patented circumlocutory style, sparred with reporters over the use of the word ‘dire’ to describe the situation of the institution he heads. “Dire reflects some immediacy like tomorrow or yesterday and I can say this with the greatest honesty, those wicked people who are out there and trying to pander to this notion that this NIS is a sinking ship and it’s about to go down, it’s just total nonsense.” But even he was forced to acknowledge that, “Were we not to make specific interventions that are outlined in this actuarial review, yes, hard times, dire times, but as we sit here today the Scheme is healthy.” But that was exactly what had been proposed before but never taken aboard by the board. The 2011 actuarial report noted that for the first time in its forty-two year-old history, the NIS racked up its first ever deficit - a whopping $371M. Since nothing has been done in 2012, we can expect that the report for that year, which comes out later this year, will reveal an even larger deficit. Rather bleakly, the report concluded that with assets of just over two times its annual expenditure, “the entire Fund will be exhausted in less than 10 years if (the) contribution rate increases and benefit reforms are not made immediately”. Some of the more pertinent changes that the report recommended were: a) increasing the contribution rate from 13% to 15% no later than January 2013 as well as the adoption of a policy for future contribution increases. b) Increasing the wage ceiling to $200,000 per month. c) Freeze pension increases (no pension increase) for two years or until contribution rate is increased and finances improve. And most controversially; d) Increase the pension age from 60 to 65 on a phased basis. And all of this did not signify ‘dire”? In a very far-reaching review, the Private Sector Commission (PSC) assessed the Report’s recommendations, but fundamentally concluded that as a threshold issue, the NIS has to first get its house in order. We could not agree more. The first thing we recommend is that the entire board of the NIS must be scrapped and be replaced with individuals that are qualified to run the affairs of that critical institution. It boggles the mind to learn that the contributory base of the NIS keeps shrinking when the employment situation has improved so dramatically in Guyana. After so many reviews and recommendations, why has the NIS not been revamped to capture the new emerging Guyanese workforce? Have all the new taxi-service depots that flourish in every town, village and hamlet been brought into the pool? Has the NIS been working with the GRA’s licencing office, for instance, to ensure that before the taxi owners receive their licenses, they submit their NIS submission certificates? And the same for the burgeoning gold-mining industry and the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission? But what in fact was most stupefying to discover, in light of the crisis the NIS is facing - when workers are being denied their benefits through the imposition of all sorts of hoops that they have to jump through - was that last December, the NIS Board acquiesced in the non-payment of dividends from the Berbice Bridge. The NIS Board, in its wisdom, had invested some $1.5 billion in that venture. Now when it is facing another massive loss in 2012, it is criminal for the Board to pass on some $200 million in dividends. The question has to be asked: “In whose interest is the NIS Board acting?” Why should it buy into the importuning of Berbice Bridge Company Inc., when that institution has consistently declared massive profits and its Board lived high off the hog? Is the NIS committing suicide?
Friday February 15, 2013
Letters... Where your views make the news Letters...
DEAR EDITOR: In a classified conversation that Bharrat Jagdeo has with the then US Ambassador His Excellency Mr. Robinson on October 2, 2006, that was leaked by WIKILEAKS; he outlined his priorities for the second term as: breaking Guyana’s wave of violent crime; improving the investment climate; a tenyear plan to climb out of poverty; better working relationship with the donor community, including more IDB debt relief with support from the USA; pushing for local elections; building parliamentary capacity; expanding civil society’s role; and opening the media. Of these eight priorities set by the second Jagdeo regime, only one can be considered as being achieved – debt relief. That is a 15 per cent pass mark and in any examination can be considered as a big F; FAILED! In that conversation with the US Ambassador, Jagdeo claimed that combating violent crime is his top priority. Yet when he got the billions of dollars in support from the British in 2006 for the security sector Project to actually help the State combat violent crime, he balked at the proposal. Jagdeo was more interested in the cash and equipment for street patrols rather than develop a security strategy with significant elements of capacity building
and training for the Police Force. Every developmental deficit in Guyana is seen as an opportunity to rape the Treasury totally ignoring the human development needs of the people. Aren’t the key members of the Jagdeo/ Ramotar cabal aware that the crime wave in Guyana is driving investors and productive people away from Guyana? It has been empirically proven as in the case of South Africa in a paper by Ozler et al that crime “divert resources away from productive activity and cause the migration of the best brains”. But this fact is just beyond the cerebral matter of members of the Jagdeo / Ramotar cabal. It is now clear to all that the only reason they refused the billions of dollars of money from the British was because the UK demanded full accountability and transparency on the MILK and HONEY and the greed machine that controls Freedom House cannot live with accountability. Their modus operandi is to use a flawed procurement system with no Public Procurement Commission in place to feed the wolf pack more MILK and HONEY. They do not care whether the people are protected and safe from the criminals. Well the British will have none of it and made it clear they are not prepared to pour money down the pockets of
the corrupt Jagdeo/Ramotar cabal. The favoured princeling, Clement Rohee, is on his knees politically and all of a sudden the political players in Freedom House are willing to rework the British plan, some eight years late as a last minute effort to save Rohee. The last thing on the minds of the PPP leaders at this time is the safety of our people and the people’s action must register in their
minds of the cabal that we know their game. As Jagdeo accepted in his conversation with the US Ambassador, it is all “political rhetoric, necessary but not prescriptive”. What a shame that the Guyanese people did not hook on to these professional con-man and their games earlier. Now is not too late! Regards Dr Asquith Rose and Harish S. Singh
The harsh lot of the sugar workers DEAR EDITOR, Mr Editor, as I am wont to do to begin my day here in New York, I open the Guyana newspapers on line and read in minute details all the news on my dear, suffering country of my birth, Guyana. The plethora of sad news that hits your conscious as you go through this daily exercise is almost suffocating. I lived and worked among sugar workers on the Corentyne in the 70’s and 80’s and experienced how these hard working people eked out a living. Some of them who knew me, used to approach me at work to help them alter their pay slips to reflect a $5 difference, monies which then used to buy themselves and friends a drink., In addition, I witnessed how some of them went to the butchers’ stand at the Bank
Markets and ordered a quarter pound of pork or beef to take home to their large families. I saw how these workers on payday were trampled, herded on, in line to uplift their pay. Every cent earned had to be eked out through a strike, protest demonstration etc. They did not enjoy the fat entitlements of workers in the Public Service like meal allowance, hazard and height allowance, travel allowance and prompt uninterrupted pay on the taking of sick leave etc etc, Yet, in modern day Guyana of the PPP/C Jagdeo and Ramotar cabal, these are the conditions under which sugar workers, the real “Champions of the Earth”; the proverbial “Salt of the Earth”, continue to subsist., Lionel Peters