UNC: Give update on NIS

The Opposition has called on Finance Minister Colm Imbert to give the true position of the National Insurance Scheme.

It made the call after the latest series of restrictions placed on the population in response to a spike in covid19 cases.

Couva South MP Rudranath Indarsingh, at a media conference at the office of the Opposition Leader on Sunday, said many small and medium enterprises had been going out of business since the start of the covid19 period.

He said this meant that many people would be moving out of the formal economy and into the informal economy.

Indarsingh questioned what effect this would have on the National Insurance Scheme. He said Imbert was not telling people the true state of affairs based on the actuarial valuations of the scheme.

He said two recommendations from the 10th actuarial valuation of the National Insurance System, as of June 30, 2016, were that the retirement age be moved to 65, and the minimum pension of $3,000 be frozen. Indarsingh said the report recommended that for every year before age 65 that a person accessed their pension, six per cent would be lost. He said it is for these reasons that Imbert did not want to lay the reports for 2018, 2019, and 2020 before the Parliament.

Indarsingh also questioned the status of the Roadmap to Recovery report and whether any recommendations from the report had been implemented. He suggested the report was “languishing in a dustbin.”

He questioned why the Labour Minister had been silent on the issues facing businesses and workers during the covid19 period. The minister should be giving statistics, he said, on job losses, the risks of covid19 in the workplace, and updates on financial support being offered to SMEs by the National Entrepreneurship Development Company (NEDCO).