Dear Editor,
It was most exciting to learn of the Minister of Finance reporting on the urgent need to restructure the NIS, and upgrade the financial situation in which it has floundered for decades. Too few today would appreciate what a pioneering social welfare intervention was the NIS in 1969, to the extent that its management was invited by, and responded to, other Cari-com Governments plea to help establish comparator agencies in their territories. Notwithstanding, the fortunes of our NIS wavered under varying administrations. One exceptional attempt at its upgrading was however undertaken during the regime when Dr. Roger Luncheon was Chairman of the Board. He creatively organised a rather representative group of interested parties to review and make recommendations for the agency’s improved delivery capacity. The interactions there included the undersigned being selected to attend and observe the operations of the Barbados counterpart. The assignment proved to be a most instructive experience – in the first instance against the background of that country’s retirement age of 65 years in the 1970s.
Pause to note here the implications for funding the local agency as a result of a (colonial) public service pensionable age of 55 years – differentiating from the eligibility for an NIS pension only at age 60 years. Every administration has stoutly refused to upgrade the retirement age of public servants to 60 years while other public sector agencies (including for example the GRA and Office of the Auditor General amongst others) enjoy that entitlement. What was most impressive, from a human resources perspective, was the quality of the staffing in Barbados, with everyone at a desk being a university graduate – a factor barely considered and hardly ever matched in the employment process of the local entity. At the time of my visit its CEO was overseas completing a PhD programme. Critically the Barbados counterpart enjoyed a degree of autonomy that was hardly subverted by any political influence. For one, its management’s decision-making was informed by a legal department containing five Attorneys-at-Law, young men proud of the record that few employers could risk being unregistered of the Scheme for any extended period.
To supplement this disciplinary procedure, the Barbados NIS had already established a website that included the display of an application form that could be completed not only by any existing employee, but interestingly also, a prospective employee who would be able to enter more relevant information when actually employed. The agency would then take the appropriate follow-up action with the identified employer. Needless to say, this creative recommendation when made locally, was greeted with less enthusiasm than was expected, since it would have appeared to compromise related private sector interests. Opportunity is now again taken to pray that the announced plans for the revitalisation of our NIS will include this long delayed initiative. Indeed it may not be a bad thing to ask Prime Minister Mottley to arrange to provide the technical assistance needed.
Sincerely
E.B. John
On behalf of too many female
unregistered employees in particular
