The Tribune

By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

AMID complaints that some major employers have not been paying National Insurance Board payments despite deducting contributions from staff pay, an NIB official said workers can still get benefits once they prove work history.

Pandora Butler, senior manager at NIB, said she could not confirm a specific company’s compliance status but spoke generally on what workers can do in this situation.

“If you are referencing a company’s payment I cannot speak to that or any discussion about that,” Ms Butler noted.

“Whether a person applies, for sickness or maternity or unemployment or retirement or invalidity (benefits) or any benefit the National Insurance Board provides where the contributions are not paid there is a requirement to confirm that the contributions were payable.”

Ms Butler said before any consideration is made there has to be confirmation that the person did in fact work and the contributions were payable.

“Further, we have to get confirmation of what the wages of that person was. Not only do we need to find out if the contributions were made, we need to know what wage level the person is at so we can know what to pay them. What ordinarily happens is when a claim comes in most of the claim forms have on the back of them a box for you to list all of the places where you have worked. Of course we anticipate that, either some people (employers) may not have paid or others might be in arrears, so there is a request of one’s employment history.

“We also check in-house as well. We have said there is a backlog of posting contributions so we will check to see if that is the case. If the contributions are not in-house or caught up in the backlog and were in fact not paid then a B46 form is generated. This form goes to the employers and gets from them, the person’s employment history with them and the level of contributions payable by them. We will then use the records we have got to credit the person’s account with those contributions, pay them based on that and then we will pursue the employer for payment.”

As long as there is employment history that has sufficient contributions attached, employees will be paid the unemployment benefit by NIB every two weeks upon approval, The Tribune was told.