Why is NIS so reluctant to engage its clients?
QUESTION: I read your article ‘Demand for accountability should extend to NIS’. I will share my experience. I’m a retiree, living in the US. I have been receiving benefits twice yearly since 2011. The cheque for the second half of 2015 came with the wrong name. It was returned by registered mail on December 22, 2015. To date, it has not been replaced. I’ve tried writing, calling, sending a friend/advocate – all to no avail. Please feel free to use this information in any way that you find useful. — M. L. C-K, USA
INSURANCE HELPLINE: What’s going on in the Ministry of Labour & Social Security (MLSS)? The National Insurance Scheme (NIS) is operated by this ministry. The question is posed in the context of your many unsuccessful attempts to fix a nearly three-year-old problem, a UK-based friend’s contacts with NIS, and my personal experiences.
Mine led to an email to the ministry’s administrative head – the permanent secretary – and two unfavourable articles in this newspaper. The last one had a photo of NIS Director Portia Magnus. In any well-run entity that exists to serve citizens, that article would have sparked a reaction. This piece was written before a Jamaica Observer report stating that the National Insurance Fund board “had called in the Financial Investigations Division and the police after uncovering ... a fraud (estimated at $600 million)” at the agency.
After I received your email, I telephoned t he NIS’s main office at least 12 times. Efforts to speak with Ms Magnus failed. The telephone rang but no one answered. I almost gave up. My last try was to write to MLSS’s political head.
I got hold of Minister Shahine Robinson’s email address from the Jamaica Information Service. I believed that despite her many duties, she would see the bigger picture and especially understand how much ‘the little folks’ in the nooks and crannies of Jamaica and the diaspora depend on their social security cheques.
I sent an email to the minister on January 29. It read: “Dear Minister Robinson, I found it easier to obtain your address than that of NIS Director Portia Magnus. I phoned the ministry’s North Street HQ to obtain same for the NIS director and was asked to dial 922-8539. I dialled the number at least a dozen times immediately after but failed to make contact. This experience confirms the travails of the person who wrote to me and one of the points in the article referred to (dated January 28): the ministry and the NIS do not appear to be focused on serving citizens!”
I am yet to receive a reply.
CONTINUED NON-RESPONSE
The continued non-response of the MLSS and the NIS leads me to pose the following questions:
Are the MLSS and the NIS serving the public interest by their continued failure to respond to the issues raised by retirees like M. L. C-K in the US in 2015, my friend in the UK in 2016, and the articles that I wrote on April 9, 2017 and January 28, 2018?
What mechanisms are currently in place to respond effectively to retirees’ and contributors’ complaints who have no access to the communication tools and media platforms like I do?
Accountability is a word Prime Minister Andrew Holness uses quite regularly – most recently in relation to the appointment of a chief justice. I have never heard him, or for that matter, other users define the term.
However, knowing that he studied management at the University of the West Indies, I have a fairly good idea what he means, thanks to Forbes magazine and authors Roger Connors and Tom Smith.
They say: “Taking personal accountability means making a personal choice to rise above one’s circumstances and demonstrate the ownership necessary for achieving desired results; to see it, own it, solve it and do it. (It) is something you (a job occupant), choose to exhibit – it is not assigned to you ... you can be given responsibility, but you have to take accountability”. If that definition is correct, shouldn’t the top officials at the MLSS and t he NIS be aware that the state of affairs in the ministry and the NIS are unsatisfactory? Why the reluctance to share with beneficiaries and members of the public the steps put in place to improve the situation?
Here is another example that displays the lack of accountability. Funds were used to buy health insurance for retirees or pensioners from Sagicor Life Jamaica. This was a good idea, but that is where it ends.
The plan is i naccurately called NI Gold. That noun is associated with wealth, affluence, first place, treasure, money and riches, prosperity, et cetera. It is anything but.
Benefits bear no association to the real costs or those provided by other plans. For example, $500 for doctor ’s office visit versus an average actual cost of say, $3,500, or a prescription drug li mit of $5,000 per annum, an amount that is less than what is needed to combat the H2N3 influenza virus.
Most troubling, however, is the fact that neither insurance provider nor the NIS management has paid any attention to properly communicating the benefits to members.
I have decades of experience in this area, but I still have great difficulty in understanding the answers to the frequently asked questions in the Sagicor brochure.
Imagine, therefore, the plight of the retirees in Mandeville, Manchester, or Gimme-me-bit, Clarendon? This is yet another symptom of problems inside the MLSS and the NIS.
I hope that some official in the Office of the Prime Minister will read this, and, more important, that person will put one of the words that is key to his agenda – accountability – into action in relation to the MLSS and the NIS for the benefit of all citizens.
■ Cedric E. Stephens provides independent information and advice about the management of risks and insurance. For free information or counsel, write to: aegis@flowja.com