The Tribune

By EARYEL BOWLEG

ebowleg@tribunemedia.net

PEOPLE collecting unemployment payments at SunCash can use a “digital wallet” to pay bills as an alternative to redeeming cash in person, according to National Insurance Board (NIB) Director Dr Nicola Virgill-Rolle.

On Tuesday, scores of people queued in a long line under a tent outside SunCash, prompting criticism that they were not practising social distancing. However, Dr Virgill-Rolle explained SunCash informed her that those lines do not only represent NIB customers as the company only has about 500 clients at the moment.

She told The Tribune: “...They only have a small number of clients who come, you know, no more than every two weeks... They don’t have to come to get cash there. They can use their digital wallet, and so I think SunCash business has other services they’re doing now... which can also be part of the reason why people are on lines there, but they only service a small number of persons for the government unemployment assistance.”

She added NIB partnered with SunCash to use digital wallets and people who do not have bank accounts generally have allowed the funds to be placed in the wallets. “The money is placed on their phone in a digital wallet and they can take that phone and go to grocery stores or pay utility bills or anything like that and they do not have to go to redeem it for cash. Some people are choosing to go and redeem for cash and it’s their choice to do so,” she explained.

“We looked at this as another method to pay in a safe manner and so we’re continuing the education with SunCash in order to let people know that they do not have to go into the office.”

There were also complaints of unemployment payments not being sent to bank accounts, but the NIB director revealed that about 95-99 percent have no problem with money being sent as they have provided correct information while a small number of people have not. Giving the wrong detail leads to the payment being rejected by the bank when it is processed.

“...It would take about one to three days for the bank to inform NIB that it rejects the payment and so in some cases we’re able to locate and contact the customer to update the information but remember we are processing new claims,” she said.

“...So for every claim we have to correct that’s time spent not on a new claim and so in some cases where we can’t correct easily we change it in our system and update for the next payment run but you know it takes some time away from processing new claims if the customer has not done his part and provided correct information.”