Dear Editor,
I would like to share a national nightmare with the Guyanese public, home and abroad. The story begins with my father, Roopnarine Lachhman, a sugar harvester from the Corriverton region, who unfortunately passed away in 2004. He had laboured on the Guyanese sugar plantations all his life. He eventually made it to pensioner. I actually authored a book, Indo-Caribbean Indenture: Resistance and Accommodation (Kingston, University of the West Indies Press, 2007) and dedicated it to this man. If it weren’t for his dedicated service I would not have been where I am today. That is actually the good part. The nightmare is that we have been trying to collect his “contributions” as they call them in Guyana, for his wife, my mother, for two missing years 2004-2006.
My mother, as I understand it, is entitled to a survivor’s claim, which is about $7000 a month, because of my father’s service in the sugar cane fields. However, the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) has on record that my father died in 2006, not 2004, even when we provided that office with his death certificate showing that he actually died in 2004. We were informed in August 2010 in person to send a written appeal claiming for the two missing years, which would then be mailed or picked up, not faxed, from the Corriverton branch to Georgetown for investigation. I have been trying from overseas since August to get an answer via phone and otherwise on the status of my mother’s survivor’s claim. One particular day, I desperately called the Port Mourant office number listed on the NIS web page after connections to Corriverton were poor. I got someone’s residence at Whim. It was embarrassing. I called the main office in Georgetown and I got a busy signal. It was frustrating. A few weeks later I was able to make contact with the Corriverton branch. It was disappointing. I was told pretty much the story I was told four months earlier. The case is still being investigated.
Could someone with some basic human decency explain to the Guyanese public why it takes over four months to get a final word on a national insurance claim when all the records have been provided? What is the hold up? As I wait for word from NIS the national nightmare continues. My father is probably rolling over in his grave. Does this government care? Let me say that this man voted for the PPP all his life. He was bamboozled into believing that Jagan and his entourage would provide a better Guyana for the working class especially. How sad.
Yours faithfully,
Lomarsh Roopnarine
St Croix, Virgin Islands