Dear Editor,
I thank Ms Baxter, PRO for her response of March 16 in SN to my recent letter on NIS and contributors/pension issues.
My objective to have a public discussion and relevant action at/by NIS seems to be on the right track.
A few decades ago I worked here in Management and my time was enhanced by at least two positions that made me better than what I really was.
There was a Registry Supervisor and my own Typist/Secretary. Any letter that came to me was looked at and initialed by a note “file pl” and on my desk appeared the appropriate file because they followed a system. I could read the history and respond appropriately.
When I went up North computers and the new trend arrived. Storage became a whiz. Unfortunately “retrieval” was/is a major management problem and decision making challenging. New systems emerged.
Ms Baxter gives information maybe without full research and analysis. As I said before: “Statistics are like bikinis. What they reveal is suggestive, what they conceal is vital”.
In 2018 NIS told us that at least 75 percent of all pensioners were being paid at the minimum rate. Today she says the percentage is about fifty. It suggests that either more persons are joining the higher rate or more of us minimum payees are dying out. Just what are the demographics and what has changed?
In 2020 (SN 9/19/20) a woman contributor publicly lamented that she was worried that her husband would not get her “survivors” benefit if she dies as she was the bread earner and he was the stay at home caregiver. What has changed in their (and similar) application?
In 2015 my own wife passed and I applied for her “survivors contribution” benefit and was told no I can’t get. Now Ms Baxter says it “has always been payable to men”. So how many men get paid and how many are rejected and why.
All of us men contribute/contributed to every benefit. Over fifty years later we are told of social concerns and that the Law has to be amended for us to get paternity benefits. And further I say not.
In relation to NIS Pension since in this first decade that “same regulations issue” was explained to me in writing when I queried my pension payment against that of my wife being the same (she who contributed less and lower) and I left it at that. But NIS knew since then that it was wrong and they corrected it going forward leaving us “bunched” as still exist today.
If Ms Baxter reads the “Comments” section of SN and does her own research she will know the extent of the disquiet.
We will all await the Ministry of Finance and as pointed out by Ms Baxter the proviso is that the minimum “shall” be no less than fifty percent and not limited in any way to that minimum (as maximum!!) Retroactivity is always implied also even in the same Regulations.
So what are we the bunched living poor owed for 2021:22:23!?
Patience is virtue??
Eek.
L A Camacho
