PSC says no to NIS proposals

Get your house in order before imposing further burdens on employees and employers was the message that the Private Sector Com-mission (PSC) had yesterday for the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and it declared that it will not support recent actuarial recommendations to hike the contribution rate and raise the pensionable age unless the Scheme is more efficiently run.

Delivered in a position paper, the PSC stance will be seen as a stinging rebuke to the government and the NIS, which had been hoping to fast-track changes on the basis of the eighth actuarial report done by Actuarial and Financial Consultants Horizonow and which was tendered to the government in October this year. That report had said that the NIS was approaching a crisis stage and needed urgent action. The report then listed a series of immediate steps, the majority of which the PSC is not willing to endorse.

In a lengthy paper released at a session with the media at the Georgetown Club, the PSC said that it was “very concerned” with the state of affairs at the