Receiving his pension from the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) 26 years after retiring is a day Mon Repos resident, Shamean Matthews, thought would never come.
Years of constant back and forth and many disappointing enquiries had forced him to give up. But at the announcement of an outreach to his community by Senior Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance, Dr Ashni Singh and the NIS, he decided to try “one last time.”
At the outreach held earlier this year, Matthews said he approached the Minister and related his tribulations of the past 25 years.
“When the Minister and the team come to the Mon Repos I decided to give it a chance. I didn’t know what was going to happen but I went and I told the Minister and he sent me to a woman and she interviewed me and said I had enough contributions,” he recounted to Stabroek News by phone.
A 2017 NIS tribunal ruling which declared that he was entitled to a pension motivated the 86-year-old retiree to seek the minister’s intervention since the insurance scheme never aimed to honour the ruling.
“You know I was happy in 2017 when the tribunal said I qualified for the pension. But then NIS wrote me and said that the pension was being withheld for some reason… I thought that was the end of it…” he said.
According to Matthews, after he reported to Singh that the officer found he had qualified for a pension, they were ordered to move ahead with the necessary paperwork.
But while the payments for the outstanding years were expected to be processed in two weeks, Matthews said that did not happen.
“When they were taking my information I asked the guy how long it will take to process all of this, he said within two weeks, but it actually turn out to be 10 weeks… during the 52nd anniversary celebrations they give me the books,” he said with a sigh of relief.
To date, 15 years of pension benefits have been processed for him and Matthews said he is awaiting the social insurance agency to process the re-maining ten, before bringing his account up to date.
“They said I have to deposit the 15 years first and then go back to them and they will start processing the last 10 years. I don’t know how long that will take but they have to do that before I can start receiving monthly pension,” he explained, while expressing gratitude to the Minister and his team.
Throughout his working life, Matthews worked at the Guyana Credit Corporation, which is now defunct and the Parika Marketing Centre as General Manager. He also said he worked as a farmer and had always ensured that his contributions were paid. However, when he approached the age of 60, when he was to become eligible for pension benefits from the NIS, he was informed that he did not have enough contributions.
“I was shocked when I learnt that because I didn’t know how come I didn’t get enough contributions. And from then I started going back and forth and finding out but I never got anywhere with that,” he related.
The elderly man said when the tribunal ruling favoured him, he thought his fate would have chang-ed but a letter from the NIS stated that they were disallowing any payments.
“That was depressing again because I thought finally I was going to get some money from what I work for but that never happened. They write me and say they are disallowing payments,” he stated.
Over the years, Matthews had to depend on the earnings of his wife, who continued to work when he retired. He stated that even when she retired, her pension cushioned his family’s financial obligations.
“Well it so happened that I didn’t had any children that had to be taken care of when I retired but there were still bills to pay and we had to survive. We make much with what my wife was earning and then when I started to get old age pension from the Government, that helped,” he said.
Being deprived of his NIS pension for 26 years made him feel as if he had worked for nothing, he told this newspaper.
“They just keep telling me I have no contributions… but all of a sudden they have contributions now… I don’t understand how that can happen… I was deprived of my benefit for so long that I couldn’t contribute properly to my family,” Matthews lamented.
“After getting through with this, I said to the General Manager, [Holly Greaves] ‘like you all were waiting for me to die before paying me any money’ because they keep saying they can’t find contributions,” he said, chuckling as he reflected on the years of struggle.
Matthews, is one of several persons who have been able to receive their pensions after years of trying. He is said to be the only person who has had to wait for so long to receive his pension.
Several others during the outreaches by the Finance Minister and NIS team to the various regions had complained of not being able to receive their pensions.
The NIS outreaches were held at the Giftland Mall, Parika Market, University of Guyana Tain Campus, NIS Corriverton Local Office, New Amsterdam RDC, Enmore Primary, Watooka House Linden, and Mon Repos Primary School.
According to the NIS website, these outreaches have benefited over 1,000 persons across the country.
The matters dealt with at the outreaches included processing of compliance certificates, contribution statements, registration and replacement of NIS cards, submission of claims along with pension and benefit queries.
