The Tribune

By TANYA SMITH-CARTWRIGHT

tsmith-cartwright@tribunemedia.net

THE government has asked the National Insurance Board to extend its unemployment assistance programme for self-employed in the tourism sector to July 1, the agency said yesterday.

The National Insurance Board also said the government has also included self-employed barbers and beauticians who rent booths to the list of those eligible for consideration of the same benefit.

Some people have criticised NIB for its backlog in COVID-19 related unemployment payments due to the high volume of the applications. In a bid to rectify this, NIB has expanded its services to the national stadium over the next three days.

“The government has asked us to extend the unemployment benefit for self-employed persons to July 1,” said NIB Director Dr Nicola Virgill-Rolle during a Zoom press conference. “We are also now going to consider barbers and beauticians who may have been self-employed, but may not have had a business licence due to the fact that they were paying booth fees at salons. So they were operating as self-employed, but just paying a fee to operate in someone else’s shop. So starting today, those persons will be included.”

To date, some $7.3 million has been paid out in unemployment benefits to self-employed people affected by COVID-19, with the government giving NIB between six to ten million dollars as funding for this programme.

As of May 25, NIB has satisfied the regular unemployment benefit by paying out $33.9 million to some 30,679 people.

This week, NIB will provide customer service from the Thomas A Robinson Stadium on Mychal Thompson Blvd, adjacent to Customs House, to its claimants in New Providence who are on the published list found on the NIB website and Facebook page. Claimants may visit the stadium on their designated day from today until Thursday between the hours of 9am and 4.30pm.

“Expanding service from the T A Robinson Stadium allows for proper social distancing and more windows for agents to provide service to thousands of customers,” an NIB statement said. “Persons are asked to adhere to the last name protocol on the published list, and are asked to present an official government identification (the NIB smart card or a passport or driver’s license) to the NIB agent at the time of service.”

All other business will continue from NIB’s headquarters on Baillou Hill Road.

The NIB director said the agency is making considerable progress with the backlog for benefit payouts.

“We estimate just under 5,000 people are left to process,” the director said. “Unfortunately some of them will not be approved. We have just processed 3,000 and we are making considerable progress.”

Due to the late payouts of the unemployment benefits, some applicants feared if they received the payments when they returned to work, or started a new job, it would be unlawful and considered, “double dipping”. The NIB director said this will not be considered “double dipping”, as the board would have paid the person for the period they were lawfully unemployed.

Mrs Virgill-Rolle said even though compliance has always been a problem at NIB in regards to employers paying on time and in some cases not paying at all, there is no worry about the board’s funding as it has $1.7 billion in reserves.