-they may all be owed $510,300 

An application for judicial review was filed yesterday in the High Court against the National Insurance Board over its alleged failure, since January 2021, to pay the minimum old-age pension at the lawful rate. 

The Applicants are civil society activist Christopher Ram, pensioner Kalicharan Heera, the Union of Agricultural and Allied Workers, the United Minibus Union and the Guyana Market Vendors Union. 

A release on behalf of the applicants say that they are  asking the Court to declare mandatory the floor of 50% of the Public Service minimum wage. They also want the court to order payment of the NIS minimum pension at that rate, and to order an account and payment of all arrears since 2021, with interest, including to the estates of deceased pensioners. Ram had previously said the outstanding sums could run into billions of dollars.

Regulation 4(b) of the NIS Benefit Regulations provides that the pension shall “in no case” be less than 50% of the Public Service minimum wage. The release said that the Board broadly honoured this until 2020. 

“Since 2021 the wage has risen every year while the pension lagged behind. Today the floor is $51,173, but minimum pensioners receive only $43,075, a shortfall of $8,098 every month. On the Applicants’ calculation, persons receiving the minimum pension throughout the period since 2021 are owed about $510,300 each. 

The NIS has never doubted its obligation. The Benefit Regulations set it out, and the NIS website, Annual Reports and actuarial reports repeated it: the minimum pension must not be less than 50% of the Public Service minimum wage”, the release said. 

It added that Parliament was also put on notice. In 2024, Annette Ferguson MP tabled a Motion, seconded by Juretha Fernandes MP, calling on Government to make retroactive payments to minimum pensioners for 2021 to 2023. The Motion was rejected by the Speaker, and the pensioners remain unpaid, the release said.

The release addd that Dr Ashni Singh, the Minister responsible for the NIS, has had several roles and many opportunities to pay pensioners their due. 

“As Minister with responsibility for finance, he also oversees the Co-operative Finance Administration, which supervises the Board, and he makes the Benefit Regulations. He presented every Budget that raised the Public Service minimum wage, and each increase should have lifted the pension floor with it. The Minister must be taken to know the law. He cannot plead ignorance of a rule he himself administers”, the release asserted.

The Applicants will serve proceedings on the Board and the Attorney General, the Government’s Chief Legal Adviser. 

Under section 34(2) of the National Insurance and Social Security Act, Parliament must make up any shortfall in the National Insurance Fund. If the Scheme cannot pay what the law guarantees, the Government must, the release contended.

By its own words, the applicants say the Board has consistently acknowledged the 50% floor and, with it, its obligation. The Applicants invited the Board to assist the Court in resolving this matter quickly and in the interests of the pensioners it serves.

Ram and 10 unions  wrote the NIS Board on October 1st threatening legal action over the arrears of statutory minimum old-age pension due to pensioners since 2021.

The letter was sent to the Secretary of the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) Board and copied to the Chairman of the National Insurance Board, the General Manager of the NIS and the Senior Minister in the Office of the President with Responsibility for Finance.

There was no satisfactory response by the board to the letter.

In a comment to Kiskadee Watch on the October 1st letter, Ram said: “We have been drawn into this action because a statutory right designed to protect the elderly and vulnerable has been curtailed by an administration that has failed to do what the law requires. In a country whose extraordinary growth has been repeatedly celebrated, minimum pensioners should not have to fight for a few thousand dollars already theirs by law.

The Applicants are represented by Khemraj Ramjattan and Christopher Ram, Attorneys-at-Law.