Dear Editor,
I write this letter seeking clarity in a matter that is of importance to many of the working population. I have reached out to the NIS on multiple occasions receiving nothing more than unfulfilled promises of them confirming with management and reverting to my questions.
The issue rests in the NIS management’s decision to halt the registration and issuing of NIS numbers to migrant persons employed in Guyana without work permits, instituting an apparent internal decision, not necessarily in line with the NIS Act that only foreign nationals with work permits can be registered with the NIS. While this in itself may have been a decision taken with good intent, it leaves a number of unanswered questions and of course is inconsistent with the actions of the NIS’ own inspectors who constantly visit the premises of businesses ensuring that NIS is deducted and paid for all ‘employed persons’.
Now under the National Insurance and Social Security Act (Chapter 36:01), the obligation to pay NIS contributions arises from being engaged in “insurable employment” or being gainfully occupied in employment in Guyana and between the ages of sixteen years of age and over and under sixty years of age; not from immigration status or possession of a work permit. No where in the Act does it draw attention to immigration status or empower the NIS or any of its officers to do the same.
Therefore, NIS contributions are about employment; not work permits. The law applies to all persons engaged in insurable employment and if someone is working and earning wages in a job that qualifies as insurable employment under the Act, then NIS contributions should be made, regardless of whether they have a work permit.
In practice, this means contributions should technically be deducted from the pay of anyone working and earning in Guyana, and the employer remits both the worker’s and employer’s payments and deductions to the NIS. The defining criterion for coverage is the existence of employment, not immigration or work permit status. While it is accepted that persons working in Guyana should do so legally, it must also be accepted that the NIS Act itself does not link NIS liability to immigration status. If someone is working without a work permit and the employer fails to deduct and pay NIS contributions, the employer can be held liable for unpaid contributions and penalties under the NIS Act’s enforcement provisions and the NIS and its inspectors will make sure of that.
In practice, NIS treats all workers meeting the employment criteria as liable for contributions as long as they are working and paid. The NIS contribution system is administered through regular employer payroll reporting and NIS registration and not through immigration or work-permit checks. I may be wrong and stand to be corrected but to the best of my knowledge, NIS inspectors are not ‘immigration agents’ and normally immigration matters should not be something that they deal with; we have a specific Ministry for that. Employers register employees with NIS based on employment and pay records and the NIS tracks contributions for registered individuals based on their NIS number and employment history both of which are again tied to employment and contributions paid, not immigration status.
This new decision taken by the management of the NIS will lead to the Scheme functioning in a more disjointed manner than it already does. NIS inspectors calling for businesses to deduct and pay contributions for anyone employed, the management of the NIS then refusing to register those persons for which said deductions are made and businesses now in a confused dilemma of being told to deduct NIS contributions on one part and then being told that the means to submit those deductions have been halted by the Scheme’s management on the other part.
It has to be one or the other and this approach taken by the NIS, while contrary to its own Act, is also abstruse and unfair. In effect, the NIS is making promises to investors (employed persons), taking their money (contributions) and then those persons are not able to access any benefits (they are not given NIS numbers despite inspectors demanding that NIS be deducted for them) with the money (contributions) just going to the NIS funds. The NIS cannot have it both ways; inspectors cannot demand NIS be deducted for all persons and then the NIS not provide the medium for those contributions to be correctly tracked and assigned when paid in.