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National Insurance Fund: Dr. Justin Robinson an URGENT Update is Required

This space is created to accommodate comments about the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) of Barbados.  The BU household concedes that the management of the NIS as with any social security fund is a complex matter. It is against this background that Barbadians need to hear the technocrats explaining the status of the NIS fund and…

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Dr. Justin Robinson, Chairman of the NIS
Dr. Justin Robinson, Chairman of the NIS

This space is created to accommodate comments about the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) of Barbados.  The BU household concedes that the management of the NIS as with any social security fund is a complex matter. It is against this background that Barbadians need to hear the technocrats explaining the status of the NIS fund and NOT the politicians.

It is unforgivable that in 2016 the public is not able to (re)view the financials of the NIS fund by clicking on the NIS website. Dr. Justin Robinson on several occasions assured the BU family in this forum that his Board intends to be transparent in its work and a first step is to bring up-to-date audited financials to the public.

The BU household invites Dr. Robinson to provide an update on the fund.

124 responses to “National Insurance Fund: Dr. Justin Robinson an URGENT Update is Required”

  1. Artax Avatar
    Artax

    charles skeete December 6, 2016 at 11:28 PM #

    “I will also toy with the requirement of a tax clearance certificate for income earners travelling abroad.”

    @ Charles

    I agree with your comments 100%.

    Before owners of private public services vehicles, taxis and hired cars could renew their road taxes, they are required to file income tax returns, apply for and submit a tax clearance certificate from the BRA as well as a NI clearance certificate from the NI Department.

    A few years ago I used to complete and file income tax returns for a number of owners of B, Z, ZM, ZR and H registered vehicles. This number drastically decreased because certain employees of the BRA are accepting payment for providing these owners with tax clearance certificate, without them having to file income tax returns. Owners see this method as a savings, since they won’t have the additional expense of paying income taxes.

    Under these circumstances and the current economic environment, some may say these BRA employees are justified in earning “an extra dollar.”

    Unfortunately, a similar undertaking may present itself if income earnings travelling abroad are willing to circumvent the law and pay BRA officers a small fee to provide them with tax clearances, without the hassle of preparing and filing income tax returns.

    Additionally, when in discussion with some building contractors, artisans, mechanics, “body work men,” electricians, and surprisingly those whom we categorize as professionals, such as doctors, lawyers, engineers, etc, these individuals often express the view they are not filing income tax returns or making the necessary contributions to the NIS.

    However, what many of them do, is to wait until near retirement age to make lump sum payments to the NIS in an effort to satisfy the required number of insurable earnings and then make subsequent payments on minimum earnings so as to qualify for a NIS pension.

    In other words, these people manipulate loop holes to cheat the system.

  2. Gabriel Avatar
    Gabriel

    Guyana is now accusing Barbados and TNT of offloading their dollars there and taking out US dollars.Kyffin is an investor there.There are many Guyanese cousins domicile here and the informal trade might be to blame.

    http://www.kaiteurnewsonline.com/2016/12/barbados-tt-gobbling-up-us-on-guyana-marketstop-hoarding-foreign-currency-sell-at-regular-rates-says-finance-minister/

  3. Gabriel Avatar
    Gabriel

    Corrected item:
    http://www.kaiteurnewsonline.com/2016/12/07/barbados-tt-gobbling-up-us-on-guyana-marketstop-hoarding-foreign-currency-sell-at-regular-rates-says-finance-minister/

  4. Vincent Haynes Avatar
    Vincent Haynes

    One thing we must always remember is that the majority of Guyanese are our kith&kin.

  5. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    Hal Austin was suggesting that children be removed from poor Bajan mothers who have more than 3, and some other person made derogatory statements about poor mothers. Well especially for Hal but also for others this is what institutionalized child raising looks like in a first world country, horrendously EXPENSIVE, of POOR QUALITY. Many of these children would be better off with their own parents who should receive some support from the state.
    When mothers raise children at home it looks easy and cheap, People even say that the mothers are ARE “NOT WORKING” The mothers are regarded as incompetent, lazy, wutless, and deserving of being put out on the street.

    This is what institutionalized child raising looks like even in a rich first world country, EXPENSIVE and of POOR QUALITY

    https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/12/07/new-ontario-child-protection-law-will-give-kids-a-say.html
    “In 2014-15, an average of 15,625 children were in foster or group-home care due to abuse or neglect from parents, and thousands more were investigated for possible protection. Ontario’s 47 privately run children’s aid societies received about $1.5 billion in government funding last year…

    And this is what the people of Ontario got for the $1.5 billion CDN per year, spent to care for 15,625 children

    “a muddled system where the government loses track of children taken into care, has no minimum qualifications for group home caregivers and allows a growing number of kids “with complex special needs” to be placed in unlicensed programs.”

    Hal must think that excellent or even fairly good foster parents are easy to find.

    The BEST and CHEAPEST way to raise a child is still at HOME.

    Somebody who is better at math than I am can divide $1.5 BILLION by 15,625 children and tell me the result.

  6. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    And I am sure that the foster care systems are no better in the U.K. or the U.S.A.

  7. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    Ah yes $96,000 per year per child.

    Mothers can probably do it at home for $9,600 per year per child.

  8. Well Well & Consequences Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences

    More often than not the child is murdered or abused in the ACS monitored foster care system, the city or state is merely giving away taxpayer’s money to strangers to warehouse chikdren, that money could help the parents to help their children, depending on the circumstances, because there are some beasts for parents. ..but most foster parents are even worse and are only it for the money.

    Warehousing kids in a dangerous foster care system with strangers is not healthy…it helps produce generations of monsters, dont care how difficult, children should be cared for in their comfirt zone, with their mother or father or relatives if available…..fostering should be the last resort if no one else is available or unable to manage.

  9. Simple Simon Avatar
    Simple Simon

    When we are critiquing public policy, or creating new public policy we must be very careful that we base such criticism, and such new initiatives on good solid EVIDENCE.

    No state has yet found a cheaper, more efficient, or more effective way to raise children

    No state, no economist, has yet found a way to reproduce itself without the unpaid work of parents, especially the unpaid work of mothers.

    Get off the backs of our young mothers. Get off the backs of our poor mothers. Get off the backs of mothers and their children who are living in the ghetto…because you know what a mother living in the ghetto still typically does a better job of child raising that all the officials in the high paid professional child raising bureaucracy.

  10. Well Well & Consequences Avatar
    Well Well & Consequences

    Black men everywhere have a disgusting blighted reputation of not taking care of their countries, their families, always neglecting their women and children, well the Chinese men have volunteered to take care of everything for them, their countries in Africa and their women and children and womenwomen…and these ungrateful, neglectful, savage black men have the nerve and gall to whine and complain…lol..well too bad.

    The Chinese men need to move full force into Barbados and the Caribbean to take care of some business. lol, haha haha, lol.

    “MODERN LOVE

    Uganda is worried about the number of Chinese men marrying their women
    Lily Kuo December 07, 2016 Quartz Africa

    Women in Uganda wait in a line to cast their votes in a parliamentary election in February 2016.
    Sought after. (EPA/Dai Kurokawa)

    Contractors, petty traders, investors, and entrepreneurs from China have been pouring into Uganda for the past decade. China is a top investor in the east African country, accounting for as much as half of total foreign investment between 2014 and 2015, according to the Uganda Investment Authority.

    But according to Ugandan immigration officials, there’s one major downside: an increasing number of Chinese men are marrying Ugandan women to gain residency and continue their business interests in the country.

    Officials told a parliamentary committee in late November that they are seeing more and more Chinese-Ugandan couples, often in sham unions. Couples are normally interviewed before spousal status is granted and Chinese men involved in sham marriages are deported.

    “But we have many who are marrying and even producing… Even our Ugandan women are accepting to [reproduce] with these men,”an official from Uganda’s directorate of citizenship and immigration control told the committee.

    Major infrastructure projects like Uganda’s Mandela National Stadium, a $1.7 billion hydropower dam in western Uganda, and the highway connecting Entebbe to Kampala have all been built by Chinese companies. Attracted by Uganda’s stability and demand for cheap goods, independent traders and business people are also opening factories and retail shops selling imported Chinese goods. There are between 10,000 and 50,000 Chinese in the country, local Chinese expatriates estimate.

    But now, tensions appear to be rising. Ugandan authorities are conducting more raids to catch foreigners living in the country illegally. In July, 12 Chinese were arrested for violating immigration laws.

    Government-to-government relations have also come under strain. Last month, Ugandan lawmakers summoned a Chinese executive of the state-owned China Communication Construction to explain the circumstances of his company’s securing a $475 million contract to build an expressway in Entebbe.

    Annoyed during the briefing, Zhong Weidong, managing director of the company, told the panel, “China assists African countries to develop. If you don’t like, it can stop; we can stop.”

  11. Vincent Haynes Avatar
    Vincent Haynes

    We have the solution……..

    Under those circumstances? Yes. A fitted program which is monitored.
    Guyanese needed in Barbados
    Barbadian Member of Parliament, Edmund Hinkson, wants Guyanese to boost the island’s agriculture, and has said that the country erred in sending back to Guyana a large number of these workers betwe…
    kaieteurnewsonline.com
    http://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2016/12/09/guyanese-needed-in-barbados/

  12. David Avatar
    David

    IMF cautions Govt on NIS

  13. David Avatar
    David

    @Vincent

    You love to read Harry Russell : http://www.nationnews.com/nationnews/news/91336/wild-coot-odds-us

  14. vincent haynes Avatar
    vincent haynes

    David

    Thanks….it always baffles me as to why govt believes thatby keeping quiet on his articles will mean they will be ignored

  15. Island Mostly Frigged (IMF) Avatar
    Island Mostly Frigged (IMF)

    IMF here we come. I am waiting on the Governor of the Central Bank, the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister to tell us if we have requested the assistance of the IMF in the form of the Structural Adjustment Program.

  16. millertheanunnaki Avatar
    millertheanunnaki

    @ vincent haynes December 12, 2016 at 5:23 PM

    What Harry is trying to tell you guys is that Barbados is about to enter a formal IMF programme more than likely before the start of the new fiscal year i.e. April 2017.

    Poor Dr. JR is just the rabbit sent into to open the batting on a rather sticky wicket against a barrage of fast bowling coming the way of the DLP administration.

    This administration has a date with destiny very early in the new year of 2017. Either by way of announcing early elections or an inevitable trip to the banker of last resort. Take the hint Mia is conveying to the naïve people of Barbados.

    The government needs forex badly to fix a lot of the country’s crumbling public sanitation infrastructure in order to protect its vital forex earner, tourism.

    If the Bridgetown Sewage plant becomes totally clapped out the dog would really be dead for shitty Bridgetown.

  17. millertheanunnaki Avatar
    millertheanunnaki

    @ Island Mostly Frigged (IMF) December 12, 2016 at 5:50 PM

    I see both of us are thinking from the same side of the brain.

    Smart guy you are!

    That dastardly lying pretentious administration is about to face the music.
    Let them blame the BLP for forcing them into an IMF programme forgetting poor OSA, the harbinger of IMF doom and gloom, is no longer a member.

  18. Prodigal Son Avatar
    Prodigal Son

    @miller, Artax

    Which lawyer in Barbados was allegedly paid 10 million for work done to sell the oil company?

    No wonder we are at the IMF door on our knees with our cap in our hand.

  19. Artax Avatar
    Artax

    Prodigal Son December 12, 2016 at 6:17 PM #

    “Which lawyer in Barbados was allegedly paid 10 million for work done to sell the oil company?”

    @ Prodigal

    I don’t know the answer to your question, but I’m guessing it could be one of three (3) lawyers I have in mind:

    1) Hal Gollop

    2) Guyson Mayers

    3) Richard Byer

  20. NorthernObserver Avatar
    NorthernObserver

    In keeping with past events, I do not expect any announcement, it will just happen. If the figures in WC’s article are accurate, we still have 6-9 months remaining on the current course.

  21. Island Mostly Frigged (IMF) Avatar
    Island Mostly Frigged (IMF)

    Artax

    Michael Yearwood

    NorthernObserver

    IMF cannot be done in stealth. It will be come public very soon, the rumours are already circling somewhat like the vultures. Does the Cabinet even know that the GOCB, MOF and PM have made a formal request to the IMF, if not, the PM is going to get his ass stringed up internally.

  22. millertheanunnaki Avatar
    millertheanunnaki

    @ Island Mostly Frigged (IMF) December 12, 2016 at 8:07 PM

    Please let me express my sincere admiration of your intellectual acuity buttressed by the ability to see right through a facade of lies and pure bullshit regarding the inept management of Barbados’s fiscal and financial affairs over the past 5 years.

    But every bad day must have an end only to be followed by a period of scary darkness as the citizens of Bim are about to experience in the coming weeks, far less in months.

    The last show-off party has been well staged with the internment of the Trident in a time capsule of halcyon days of easy living and like the Titanic is about to meet its inevitable Waterloo.

    Barbados is no longer punching above its weight thanks to a formerly sleeping giant who in true Rip Van Winkle fashion has awaken only to find a big bad wolf knocking at the economic door of a fallen little titan.

    All it means is that all the lies and cover-up by the MoF and the Guv of the CB will be soon revealed by the light of Truth.

    It seems as if that December 2012 fudged $300 million missing since April 2013 has been a recurring mistake like a bad formula of a circular error in an Excel spreadsheet of fiddled numbers.

    Karma is a bitch, isn’t she, Bush Tea? The retired Harold Codrington would surely agree now he is no longer hamstrung by a Guv of make-believe, magic and bullshittery.

  23. Bush Tea Avatar
    Bush Tea

    @ Miller
    The real sign of the stuff finally hitting the fan was the monstrous monument at the Garrison.
    We could not want any clearer sign of brass bowlery, than for a Government – with every shiite falling apart around it, actually deciding to build a big ugly monument, over-powered with an established symbol of Satan…. in the middle of the damn Savannah…

    Bushie is sorry for any Bajan who is not prepared for hell…..

  24. Hants Avatar
    Hants

    @ millertheanunnaki,

    what is your prediction re value of bds dollar after devaluation ?

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