A fi­nan­cial plan­ner is call­ing on all em­ploy­ers who have been not pay­ing Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sys­tem (NIS) con­tri­bu­tions on be­half of their em­ploy­ees to stop the un­scrupu­lous act im­me­di­ate­ly.

Nigel Gard­ner, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of NAG In­sur­ance and Fi­nan­cial Ser­vices, in­cor­po­rat­ed, by Guardian Group, in an email in­ter­view wrote, “ Fur­ther if they (em­ploy­er) deduct mon­ey from the em­ploy­ee but fail to pay that amount plus their twice amount to NIBTT (Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board of T&T), that is an of­fence which car­ries a fine plus a jail sen­tence.”

Gard­ner made the state­ment in re­sponse to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s, ref­er­ence to em­ploy­ers hir­ing peo­ple dur­ing the pan­dem­ic but not re­port­ing the ex­is­tence of those peo­ple to the NIB.

Row­ley who made the state­ment at his Ju­ly 10 press con­fer­ence, not­ed the rev­e­la­tion of this kind of cor­rup­tion came with the Gov­ern­ment’s salary re­lief grant for reg­is­tered work­ers who were now on the bread­line as a re­sult of ei­ther down-sized busi­ness­es or com­pa­ny clo­sures.

He said the grant, which is ad­min­is­trat­ed through the NIB re­vealed not on­ly an un-list­ing of some work­ers ac­cess­ing the grant but al­so af­firmed in­stances where em­ploy­ers failed to dis­close their em­ploy­ees to the NIBTT.

Gard­ner said this “dis­cov­ery” was noth­ing new as he had sev­er­al clients over the years with this ex­pe­ri­ence, come to him to seek help. He ex­plained the course of ac­tion that should be tak­en.

“If the em­ploy­ee sus­pects that this is the case, they can make a con­fi­den­tial re­port to the NIB who will do a pri­vate in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter. If con­tri­bu­tions are not be­ing made by the em­ploy­er even af­ter the em­ploy­ee has been de­duct­ed his / her con­tri­bu­tion, then it is the right of the em­ploy­ee to seek re­dress and find out if the em­ploy­er is mak­ing pay­ments on their be­half. If it is found out that the em­ploy­er has not been pay­ing on the em­ploy­ee’s be­half, and found guilty, in con­junc­tion with the fine for the of­fence and jail time, the em­ploy­er is al­so re­quired to pay all of the out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions that should have been made on be­half of the em­ploy­ee from the date that it’s proven con­tri­bu­tions had stopped be­ing paid or with­held.”

The is­sue is on­go­ing as in 2020; a Guardian re­port not­ed the cur­rent sta­tis­tics at that time, “The An­nu­al Re­ports of NIB showed that in 2018 em­ploy­ers were in ar­rears of over $437 mil­lion. In 2017 em­ploy­ers’ ar­rears amount­ed to $565 mil­lion and $383 mil­lion in 2016.

When con­tact­ed since Ju­ly 13, for a list­ing of em­ploy­ers com­mit­ting the act and to get an up­date on the fig­ures of out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions, NIB’s ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Niala Per­sad-Po­li­ah re­spond­ed yes­ter­day via What­sApp stat­ing that she was on ‘com­pas­sion­ate leave’ from of­fice.

She asked that Guardian Me­dia con­tact NIB’s man­ag­er of cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions, Tri­cia Clarke, who when con­tact­ed, said via What­sApp, “I am in re­ceipt of your mes­sages and will reach out to you ac­cord­ing­ly.”

Guardian Me­dia reached out to Min­is­ter of Labour, Stephen Mc Clashie, who is yet to re­spond.

We al­so con­tact­ed Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning, to find out if the Min­istry of Fi­nance was in a po­si­tion to re­lay the gen­er­al­i­ty of this oc­cur­rence and to dis­close a mon­e­tary val­ue on out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions. Man­ning in a Face­book Mes­sen­ger re­sponse, said, “ The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance or Prime Min­is­ter will is­sue a state­ment at the ap­pro­pri­ate time.”

Mean­while, at­tor­ney-at-law Bri­an Baig, re­mind­ed em­ploy­ers en­gag­ing in such acts, un­der sec­tion 40 of the NIS Act, “An em­ploy­er who fails or ne­glects to pay or ef­fect pay­ment of a con­tri­bu­tion in re­spect of any per­son in his em­ploy­ment who is re­quired to be in­sured un­der this act, is li­able on sum­ma­ry con­vic­tion to a fine of $4,000 and six months im­pris­on­ment and in the case of a con­tin­u­ing of­fence shall be li­able in re­spect of each per­son for whom he ne­glect­ed or failed to pay or ef­fect pay­ment of con­tri­bu­tion, a fur­ther fine of one hun­dred dol­lars a day for each day that the of­fence con­tin­ues af­ter con­vic­tion.”