The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

The National Insurance Board (NIB) has paid out $16m in benefits, and processed more than 20,000 unemployment benefit claims, during the first month of the COVID-19 lockdown.

Brensil Rolle, minister of the public service and national insurance, told the House of Assembly, though, that "duplicate applications" had impacted the self-employed benefit initiative being administered by NIB. Of 8,800 claims, only 7,200 or 81.8 percent were determined to be original submissions.

"In terms of the unemployment benefit programme, NIB has - from March 20 to April, 25 that's one month - processed over 20,000 unemployment claims and paid out approximately $16m during this time period," Mr Rolle said.

"Many of these claims have been settled through innovative arrangements with employers where NIB pays the employees the unemployment benefit payments through the employer. In return, some employers have opted to receive a credit on their contribution accounts or, as in most cases, NIB pays the employer upfront. In other cases, NIB processes the payments directly."

However, Mr Rolle added: "NIB continues to have about 2,500 claims who are either awaiting contributions statements from employers or the posting of those contributions. We continue to ask employers to send in their C10s for March 2020 in a timely manner, and in the prescribed form, which will allow the NIB staff to quickly post the contributions credits to employee accounts."

Turning to the unemployment assistance made available to self-employed Bahamians, the minister said the "application process has been moving steadily". He added: "While NIB has received over 8,800 applications, many of these have been duplicate applications. NIB's analysts ascertain that there were 7,200 unique applicants.

"Of these, approximately 5,000 have been approved and paid, or are in process to pay. Some $2.7m has been disbursed with the majority going to bank accounts. About 1,800 have been denied mainly due to the lack of required information, including a business licence in the case of the non-tourism related self-employed applicants. There are about 400 applications pending adjudication."

Mr Rolle said NIB was "seeing a decline in the number of new applications, indicating that those who fall into the various categories covered by this programme have already applied".

He added that employer use of NIB's self-service (ESS) portal was increasing, and said: "Since March 20, 2020, when the emergency orders took effect, some 283 additional employers have registered for the ESS online portal, added to the 125 already enrolled in it. Again, this allows employers to easily manage their contributions payment accounts with NIB."

Mr Rolle, meanwhile, said the National Insurance Board (NIB) legislation will have to be amended if the government decides to increase the period during which Bahamians can receive unemployment benefits from 13 weeks to 26 weeks.

He was responding to the Chamber of Commerce and Employers Confederation director responsible for labour matters, Peter Goudie, who said was he hoping the Government will extend the unemployment benefits from 13 weeks to 26 weeks as they did after Hurricane Dorian.