The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The National Insurance Board (NIB) has to-date paid out more than $38m in benefits to unemployed workers impacted by COVID-19, a Cabinet minister confirmed yesterday.

Brensil Rolle, pictured, minister for the public service with responsibility for NIB, told the House of Assembly: “It is estimated that more than 40,000 workers have either been interrupted, or there has been some suspension of their earnings or from work, in the past three months. This is due only to COVID.

“NIB’s main objective and priority, therefore, for the last seven weeks is to make sure claims from these persons that were unemployed - and are still unemployed - are processed in the fastest and quickest possible way. We started the process by simply taking the carefully-considered position that we have to do something to help those persons who have been impacted by COVID.”

Mr Rolle explained: We determined that our first step would be that we would pay pensions a little bit earlier than the prescribed date. So in the last three months, we have made available to Bahamians their pensions at an earlier date, and therefore NIB has put out approximately $67m in early pension payments so that individual families could carry on their way of life.

“On our computer system at NIB, and I’m talking basically about the D3 claims, 9,000 persons were paid and approved. We disbursed 20,000 different disbursements to individuals and the pay-out was $11m. That was through the regular computer system at NIB,” he added, referring to benefits paid to self-employed persons in tourism and other sectors.

Mr Rolle said unemployed workers would have experienced significant delays in receiving their benefits had these been paid out through NIB’s system. As a result, NIB “expedited” the process by allowing employers to act as its agent and make these payments on its behalf, for which they will be reimbursed at a later date.

The minister said some 24,917 applications were approved through this process, resulting in 38,100 total disbursements and a total payout of $38.1m between March 28 to June 9.

As for self-employed persons, Mr Rolle said: “Every single person who identified themselves as self-employed had an ability to go to NIB to claim assistance offered by this government. These individuals, some 6,763 of them, took up the challenge.

“They went to NIB and they applied and they were approved. We made 24,059 disbursements to them, and we paid them out of the government’s money, some $9.085m.” These were persons who do not contribute, and who cannot normally qualify, for NIB.

Mr Rolle said “close to 1,500 claims” from Abaco an Grand Bahama were processed as a result of Hurricane Dorian, and hit out at employers who were delinquent in their NIB payments yet have deducted contributions from their employees’ salaries.

“Imagine the Bahamian public that has made their commitment to their employer, only to find that the money did not get to NIB. This is so unfair. COVID-19 has exposed a lot of individuals who fall in this category, because there was no way that some persons did not have an opportunity to check their positions,” Mr Rolle said.

“We made the commitment that we have to go after those employers who cheated their staff. The director of NIB has already taken the position that investments will be made in compliance, and we will go after these companies and expose them and, in addition to that, we have also taken the position that we must adjust and we must do things differently. We have leaned some valuable lessons and these lessons are critical.

“One of the lessons we have learned is that we must move away from the manual intake of claims from mailboxes and drop boxes. We must elevate our game and take advantage of technology, so that we can indeed do business in this new Bahamas as we transition to improve the quality of life for every single Bahamian, and as we promote the ease of doing business.”

Mr Rolle continued: “NIB has launched a portal for tracking unemployment claims. Employees will be able to register at this portal and carry out the following things. They will be able to submit their claims, review the status of their claims and locate their claims payments.”

Calling this portal an “extraordinary” achievement, he added that employees will be able to track their contributions and check if their employer is paying them to NIB.