Dear Editor,
As if in anticipation of the recognition of ‘Labour Day’ in Guyana, observed in Europe, North America and elsewhere as ‘International Workers’ Day’, our Vice-President announced that there could be no help given to the National Insurance Scheme, established in 1969. One wonders how many today recall the preceding Workmen’s Compensation Act which provided for compensation for injuries at work. It is hardly appropriate to use the expression ‘beneficiary’, but the records would show that during 1950s-60s up to 28,000 thousand sugar workers (permanent and part-time) were at least partially compensated for the numerous injuries reported across estates. As young Personnel Officers in Bookers Sugar Estates we were preoccupied with processing claims for payments for injuries on behalf of the abundance of ‘field workers’ in particular, including for injuries during transportation into the ‘backdam’. As it was a time when there was not yet guaranteed employment ‘out-of-crop’ there was the prevalence of self-injury applied by ‘local doctors’ in order to earn some compensation. Too often claims of ‘back injury’ were difficult to dispute medically. So that we Personnel Officers had to persuade our colleague Field Managers to find ‘light work’, often an imaginative exercise. Then there was further dispute even when the Estate Medical Officer declared the worker ‘fit for work’. So it can be appreciated how intense was the record-keeping of injuries by the Personnel Department which would have one or more ‘Workmen’s Compensation’ Clerks.
Of course the situation improved substantially – first with the introduction of a guaranteed three day work week during the out-of-crop period. Then there was the introduction of medical certification of fitness as a condition of employment, later bolstered by annual medical examination for all categories of employees including executive directors, a development which set a very positive example. As if the foregoing was not enough, Bookers Sugar Estates introduced in 1964, the first Contributory Hospitalisation and Maternity Scheme in the country, insured initially by the internationally known American Life Insurance Company based in Wilmington, USA. Initially all monthly paid, then followed weekly wage earners were registered in the scheme which had become self-financed. So from the time the NIS was introduced in 1969, sugar workers became its biggest customers. However, as a result of the volume of claims from a workplace of some 23,000; management introduced Industrial Welfare Officers in the late 1960s to monitor safety in the field and factory. The NIS however insisted on their own Field Officers checking estates’ medical records, as part of the process of verifying accident claims/statistics. Indeed it is not unlikely that sugar workers would have been the largest group of participants of the NIS up until the recent closure of estates. So that the history shows that perhaps the sugar workers could well be one of the largest collectives of beneficiaries from an upgraded and more financially viable NIS operation.
In 2022 however, the Public Service outnumbers any other employer, with its total of more than 25,000 employees. But the one area in which cannot match the sugar industry is in respect of retirement – long established in the latter at the age 60 years. Notably it is in regard to this particular condition of employment that the protesters in France observed International Workers’ Day (Sunday 1st May, 2022) objecting to the re-elected President’s proposal to raise workers’ retirement age from 62 to 65 years. Once again to note that in Suriname, Trinidad & Tobago and the British Virgin Islands the retirement age for civil servants is 60 years. It is 65 years in Bermuda and 66.5 in Barbados. Organisations within the United Nations retire staff at 62 years. In South Africa the current retirement age is 65 years. Our NIS recognises and remunerates pension at age 60 only. Meanwhile our Public Servants are officially required to retire at the age set for expatriates in the colonial era – 55 years. Every political administration since independence (and moreso since 1969) has ignored the substantive contribution gap related to public servants who must retire at 55 years, not necessarily being able to continue payment of both employer and employee contributions until age 60.
It is arguable that any subsequent improvement in the financial viability of the NIS through retirement at 60 years could benefit pensioners generally, including of course employees of the sugar industry. Reference is made to the Pensions Act Chapter 27:02. Meanwhile, it has to be borne in mind that the Scheme supports medically certified disabilities, as well as provide maternity benefits for an increasingly female workforce. So that in the final analysis it is the organisation’s ‘customers’ about whom consideration should be urgently given, dependent as they are on the Scheme’s contribution to their health. With regard to the above, it would not be totally irrelevant for the Vice-President to insist on the NIS submitting for examination, records of related oil and gas agencies, as well as other (non-diplomatic) foreign organisations that are registered with the Scheme. For submission to the Board, NIS.
Sincerely,
E.B. John
Human Resources Director (Retd)
Bookers Sugar Estates Ltd
Guyana Sugar Corporation
