SVG and the NIS hustle

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As we age, the minds of those of us who have been privileged to work in salaried employment turn to pensions more so than ever before. Despite that our abilities will face challenges after retirement, we continue to anticipate long lives. And, many of us get lucky that way.

I keep thinking about the complacency of the Vincentian workers when it became publicly apparent that a portion of the earnings of Government employees were being withheld by employers under the pretext of “employee contribution to NIS” and never making it to destination. I mean, the withholdings were not going into the national pension fund. Furthermore, little or no effort was ever made to say what became of the monies that were being withheld. Then, to add insult to injury, there was a proposal on the table to borrow money from the NIS fund to repay and top up the NIS fund. All of this seemed to leave the Vincentian working public cold. They sought no answers and they were offered none. The band played on.

The employer, Government, did not even have to trouble itself to deny the allegation. All it needed to do was to assert that it had a right to do what it had done and the country was immediately mollified and anesthetized. The employer knew intuitively and confidently that such an outrage was cool with the people from whom they were stealing. The employer knew that the employees wouldn’t mind. Just pause for a second and wrap your head around that.

Further, the employer knows that it will never have to make good nor will it ever have to be called to account for that day will not come. The elections process, stuffed with recently fattened and done-run-fat agents are installed and will see to it that the day of reckoning will never come.

See now, the employer has painstakingly cultivated a greedy restricted core and fattened them for purpose at the expense of the same victims of theft. This is the drill. They dare not turn back for they are all implicated. The board of the NIS is selling the workers of SVG down river. Watch and see.

There are all kinds of Ponzi schemes in this world. There are also many variations on the theme. But, what they all have in common is a thick layer of incompetence.

It is hard to accept that SVG is really in trouble until its people, all of its people, decide to say so.

J. James

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