CoP refers non-payment of NIS claims to Fraud Squad

COMMISSIONER of Police Gary Griffith has referred to the Fraud Squad a letter from the National Workers Union (NWU) calling for an investigation into NIS discrepancies by an employer.

In October, the NWU president Dave Smith and general secretary Carla Walcott sent letters to Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Roger Gaspard, SC and the CoP, to investigate a company that may have faltered in its payment of national insurance benefits to recently terminated workers.

The two asked Gaspard and Griffith to investigate the failure of the company to give terminated workers certificates of contributions to the National Insurance Board (NIB) as per Section 38 of the National Insurance Act.

The union also wrote to the trade union federations, parliamentarians and the chairman of the NIB, to investigate same.

The union said on November 2 it received correspondence from the CoP in response to its October 14 letter which called for a police investigation into violations of the NIS act by employers failing to remit NIS deductions to the NIB.

“The commissioner informed the NWU that our letter was dispatched to the Fraud Squad for investigations into the allegations made,” the union said in a release.

The union is demanding that if any illegal act was committed, then the offending parties must be brought to justice.

In its original letter the union brought to the attention of the recipients that, “Within recent times, several retrenched workers of (company name called) have approached our union for advice and representation.

"In the process, they raised with us some concerns over their contributions to NIS, only to discover that no contributions were remitted to NIB for parts of 2018, none for 2019 nor 2020.”

The union said it sought a written explanation from the company but got no response.

“The employer did not comply with Section 38A of the NIS Act when they failed to give each such worker a statement of contributions deducted and paid to NIB for the year within 30 days of termination of employment. This is a criminal offence punishable on summary conviction with a fine of $4,000 and six-months imprisonment.”

The union noted that under Section 40 of the Act, an employer who fails or neglects to pay or effect payment of contribution is also committing another criminal offence and is also liable on summary conviction to a $4,000 fine and six-months imprisonment.

The union said for quite some time it has also had similar complaints from other groups of workers and felt the time had come for the law to be enforced. It pointed out that the NIB Annual Reports showed that in 2018, employers were in arrears of over $437m, $565m in 2017 and $383m in 2016.

“In fact, every year employer arrears are hundreds of millions of dollars. It certainly appears that the law is broken with impunity by employers. These criminal offences must neither be condoned nor allowed to continue," the union said in its letter.