The Tribune

FORMER Tribune managing editor JOHN MARQUIS had his Bahamas pension blocked “without warning and for no good reason”. As he battles for its reinstatement, he asks what the implications might be for Bahamian pensioners and those expats who devoted their working lives to The Bahamas.

MY experiences with the Bahamas National Insurance Board over recent weeks do not bode well for the nation’s pensioners.

If the NIB can arbitrarily block my pension for no good cause, there’s no reason why it it can’t happen to anyone.

Luckily for me, my Bahamas pension is only a fraction of my income. For hundreds, probably thousands, of Bahamians and long-term expatriates, it is essential for survival.

Those who sacrifice a percentage of their income during their working lives to fund a pension pot are entitled to a return when they retire.

To have a pension cut off without good reason is not only inexcusable and indefensible, it also undermines people’s trust and the NIB’s integrity.

If a person can’t rely on his/her retirement lifeline in their later years, then what is the purpose of the NIB? It is a question Bahamians and expat residents ought to be asking themselves right now.

During my ten-plus years as managing editor of The Tribune, a percentage of my income was hived off every month to go into the national pension fund. Once I had reached a time threshold - I think it was five years - I was entitled to a retirement pension based on my contributions.

When I retired in 2009, the NIB calculated my monthly entitlements, and arranged monthly payments into my Nassau account at the Royal Bank of Canada.

For 14 years, the system worked perfectly. The money went into my account, and I drew on it via ATMs in the UK, where I am happily and contentedly retired.

It was only when my debit card showed “insufficient funds” that I became aware of the shortfall.

I had not been notified by the NIB. Nor had I been given a reason for the suspension of funds.

When I contacted an NIB official, I was told that I had failed to submit my verification documents since 2019.

This, as I said at the time, was “utter nonsense”, as I have religiously submitted my forms - stamped and signed by my solicitor - every April and October since I retired. Only last April, the NIB acknowledged receipt of my verification.

The NIB never raised any alarm about non-compliance, nor did I suspect that anything was amiss.

If it were true that my forms failed to appear after 2019, one wonders why it took NIB officials FOUR YEARS to point it out.

It just so happens that the NIB went through a period of staff turmoil in that year. Was there a failure in internal systems? Did my forms find their way into the trash can? I don’t know, but I can assure all Tribune readers that there was no failing on my part.

After several weeks of e-mailing, and getting no satisfactory response from the NIB, I decided to tell my story in The Tribune.

Reaction came overnight. I was given a verification form, and it was duly submitted, again with my solicitor’s stamp and signature.

 Since then, I have been told three times that my form, submitted as a PDF, was illegible, even though it was perfectly readable at my end. I have since submitted the form twice more, the second time in an enhanced format to overcome any eyesight problems among NIB staff. I have again been told that it is not legible.

I have now asked an NIB official if the board’s computers are faulty - or if their staff need eye checks. I have also asked more than once when my pension would be reinstated, so far without reply.

If I were a trusting old soul in Grants Town, and entirely dependent on my Bahamas pension, I would be dreading a bleak, unhappy Christmas.

If I were an expatriate worker who had dedicated their entire working life to The Bahamas, I would be reading this story with more than a little trepidation. Unless I had substantial private pension back-up, I would be facing a potentially calamitous financial meltdown.

The whole point of the NIB is that it will always be there when you need it. My experiences in recent weeks suggest that some board officials are at best cavalier, and at worst bloody-minded, in dealing with legitimate complaints.

There has been speculation in recent months about the NIB’s viability, and whether its funds will be depleted by the end of the decade. I’m almost tempted to believe - but not quite - that the board’s management are looking for opportunities to make economies by targeting ageing expatriates like me. I hope sincerely that this is not the case because there will be many less comfortably off than me who will be feeling genuinely apprehensive about the future.

In spite of my travails, I like to think that my experiences with the NIB are more about red tape than anything more sinister.

There was a time when work permits, business licences, building contracts and other factors were used as political weapons. Victimisation was a big part of the Lynden Pindling legacy.

I like to think that my beloved Bahamas, a thrusting young nation with much potential, has matured way beyond those days of corruption and political pettiness.

It was no secret that my “reign” as The Tribune’s managing editor was controversial and often confrontational. Many people disliked me, but they were usually among the intellectually challenged. Those with brains saw me as a force for good.

With every sinew in my ageing body, I am resisting the temptation to believe that my pension woes are the product of an underhanded political vendetta.

But if suspension of my pension, which in any other context would be regarded as theft, continues for much longer, then I shall begin to fear the worst. It would not look good if a country heavily dependent on banking and financial services, was seen to be using its pension service as a tool for revenge.

In fact, my cat-and-mouse engagement with the NIB is just a little farcical. The only purpose of the wretched verification form is to establish that I am still alive.

As I have been in contact with them over a period of weeks, you would think the officials involved would have concluded that, not only am I still alive, but that all my faculties are on track.

Though I’m a contemporary of Joe Biden - I turned 80 in October - I do not totter around like a disorientated emu, nor do I shake hands with fresh air, walk into flags, stumble up (and down) stairways, or think I’m in Colorado when I’m actually in Cornwall.

I write books, paint pictures, run a thrice-weekly blog (followed, incidentally, by some seriously bright people), travel the world, joke around with my grandkids, enjoy a tot of whisky and go for long walks five times a week through my beloved Falmouth.

Though I survived two massive health scares eleven years ago, I’m fitter and flightier than the average thirty-year-old, can exchange banter with the best of them, and am still being asked to take part in major television documentaries by some of Britain’s most respected producers.

Far from being a dead man walking, I’m already planning a books and prints retrospective exhibition in 2030, a full seven years from now.

Sitting here in my lovely Cornish home, gazing out of my study window across one of the world’s great harbours, I can take comfort from the fact that destitution does not lie round the corner. Though I was brought up at the bottom of the British economic pile, the youngest child of a working class family living on a Midlands council estate, I did well in my career, lived in a succession of beautiful homes, and now reside in what is quite simply the best place in Britain.

But there is a major principle at stake here. Even though I can live without my Bahamas pension money, it still belongs to me. The NIB should not be in the business of arbitrarily overturning people’s legitimate rights, and withholding money that is theirs.

But if it can happen to me, it can happen to those who are much more reliant on their NIB pension.

 When my story appeared in The Tribune some days ago, Nassau friends expressed concern about their own position. One said: “I have always taken my Bahamas pension for granted. Now I’m not so sure.”

Another said: “My NIB pension is only part of my income and I don’t check it thoroughly every month. But I’m certainly going to check it from now on.”

I have been associated with The Bahamas in one form or another for nearly sixty years, since I was a political reporter in my 20s working for both the Nassau Guardian and The Tribune. My 14 years actually living in the country marked some of the highlights of a colourful and fascinating journalism career lasting half a century. In fact, I still regard The Bahamas as my second home.

I know for a fact that there are a lot of political scores to settle in Nassau and the islands. I dread to think that the national pension scheme might become embroiled in such matters, and that cutting off a needy person’s pension might become a weapon of an ongoing political war.

During Pindling’s premiership, the late Sir Randol Fawkes petitioned unsuccessfully for a pension for years, even though he was a key figure in hoisting Sir Lynden to power in 1967. He fell foul of the Pindling government and paid the price.

As things stand, I feel strongly that certain NIB officials, presumably without management approval, are going out of their way to be obstructive. By any reasonable consideration, deliberately withholding a pensioner’s money is tantamount to stealing. The money being withheld by the NIB is MY money, and I have met all criteria for getting my hands on it.

With those sombre considerations in mind, I await restoration of my pension and a reassurance that my troubles have in no way been motivated by malice.

Meanwhile, NIB pensioners among you would do well to ponder the words of the poet John Donne.

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls…it tolls for thee.”

• JOHN MARQUIS was The Tribune’s managing editor from 1999 to 2009. As a young political reporter, he worked for both the Nassau Guardian and The Tribune between 1966-69. On returning to the UK, he worked in London for Reuters and the Thomson Organisation, where he won a British National Press Award - the Oscars of British journalism - for investigative reporting. He was later Thomson’s London sports editor and chief boxing writer before being appointed editor and publisher of a West Country newspaper and magazine group. He has also published several books, including the Amazon bestseller Blood and Fire, which was listed in the top five books in its genre by The Wall Street Journal. He and his wife Joan, a fine art graduate and former teacher, have eight children and nineteen grandchildren. 

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