The Tribune

By KHRISNA RUSSELL

Tribune Chief Reporter

krussell@tribunemedia.net

MORE than 16,000 Bahamians continue to receive weekly government assistance due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, according to Public Service Minister Brensil Rolle yesterday.

The minister, who is also responsible for the National Insurance Board, said this is down from the 34,000 people who initially benefited from the programme at its peak last year.

While the assistance initiative is set to end in September, Mr Rolle said a decision had not yet been made on whether it would continue beyond that time.

“Thousands of ordinary Bahamians have benefitted from the programme particularly those individuals who worked in the touristic field that was totally shut down,” the minister told reporters outside Cabinet yesterday.

“Many of these individuals have not in the past contributed to NIB but they’ve benefited through the programme because of the government’s commitment to making sure those persons had bread on the table or something to eat.”

He also said: “That’s the government’s money. That’s money that the government makes and either had to divert from other projects and these funds were diverted to ensure that people had something to eat and some way to survive and so many of the projects that the government may have planned had to be put on the shelf until this pandemic is over.

“We know that over 16,000 individuals are now receiving a benefit from the government on a weekly basis.”

At its peak period the programme paid out $16m every two weeks, he said.

The initiative shed light on the frequency of employers failing to pay employees NIB contributions.

“I want to encourage every single person to go on the NIB website to check to see whether or not funds are paid on your behalf. That’s very very critical,” Mr Rolle said.

“One of the challenges we had during this pandemic is that individuals would come to NIB expecting a benefit and they were normally told that ‘listen we don’t see you in our system no one has made a contribution for you’ so what I want every single Bahamian to do is to check to make sure that your employer is making the contribution on your behalf because they should be making a deduction from your salary on a weekly basis.”

NIB, he said, is also in the process of seeing how best to go about creating new NIB smart cards.

“We’ve already done an RFP (request for proposals) and we’re examining all those things before we take the next step,” he said.