The Tribune

EDITOR, The Tribune.

Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to publicly express how disappointed I am that National Insurance has graded my monthly pension to be $400.

Last December, I was retired after a career spanning many years. Two months before, I informed National Insurance and duly applied for benefits to which I am entitled.

I have been paying National Insurance contributions consistently from the inception of the scheme.

In November last and this January, $400 were deposited to my account by National Insurance. Call me big eye, but I was shocked, to say the least, that National Insurance expects me to live on $400 per month.

On January 24, I went to National Insurance headquarters in New Providence to enquire. If frustrating me was their intention, they succeeded.

After being shuttled from Information Centre to Customer Relations, to Benefits, back to Customer Relations, on to Inspectors and back to Benefits again with no one either willing or able to give me an explanation of why my pension comes to $400 per month, I left.

I found the National Insurance employees with whom I spoke that day to be very indifferent. Their sole interest, it seemed, was to get me off their hands.

That was especially the case when I pointed out glaring inaccuracies in their printout of what they said were my contributions. The printout showed but an inaccurate portion of my contributions. And it was on those inaccuracies that my pension was apparently calculated, I was led to believe.

One National Insurance employee told me that some of the missing portions represented the period when National Insurance was not computerised. That does not come before me. I lived up to my part of the deal. I demand to be properly compensated.

If $400 per month is proper compensation, all I was asking was for someone to kindly explain to me how that figure was arrived at.

There was hardly a year when full contributions in my name were properly recorded. For example, in one year, during which time I was fully employed with a reputable firm and National Insurance contributions were being deducted from my salary, the National Insurance printout showed only three contributions to my name for that year. The best I was able to get from the National Insurance employees on that score was a shrug.

I am convinced that something is not right with our National Insurance. Bahamians must demand to know what is happening to our National Insurance money before we go there one day and find that it is all gone!

GLADSTONE THURSTON

Deadman’s Cay,

Long Island, Bahamas,

January 28, 2014.