HIV business coalition to home in on insurance

was keen to include insurance companies in what he described as “the highly successful partnership” that had already been forged with the local business community to respond to the HIV/AIDS challenge. Cummings said that GHARP had been successful in securing the services of local insurance brokers Abdool and Abdool, one of its partners, to explore ways of realizing a more liberal local insurance cover regime for PLWHA’s. According to Cummings Abdool and Abdool have agreed to investigate some of the issues that affect insurance coverage for PLWHA’s including securing overseas underwriting of local policies for PLWHA’s.
Cummings told Stabroek Business that the new local Business Coalition will be seeking to get the insurance companies “on board” with the new HIV/AIDS “alliance” that includes the banking, telecommunications, agricultural, mining and manufacturing sectors. He said that GHARP had also been working through the Rotary Club of Guyana – where several insurance companies are represented – to seek to develop an enhanced relationship with the insurance sector.
Another issue that surfaced during last Tuesday’s press conference was the delinquency on the part of some local businesses in the payment of worker National Insurance Scheme contributions. Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Guyana Business Coalition and Scotia Bank Country Manager Amanda St Aubyn said that she believed that the payment by business houses of NIS contributions on behalf of their workers was a corporate governance issue and that while she did not think that the terms of reference of the Coalition allowed it “to moved towards issues of corporate governance” she felt, nonetheless, that the Coalition could positively influence issues like NIS compliance. “I believe that through the work of the coalition we can bring about a certain amount of change with regard to letting those organizations who may not be making those contributions see the bigger picture,” she added.
St Aubyn said that the fact that awareness of employer delinquency in the payment of worker NIS contributions had now been created meant that such issues could be advocated at the level of the Coalition since they affect the very workforce the body was seeking to impact.