#BTColumn – Contending ideas on the NIS

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author(s) do not represent the official position of Barbados TODAY.

by Ralph Jemmott

A friend called to say that Prime Minister Mia Mottley was about to hold a Press Conference and that I should switch to CBC Channel 8. I thought initially that the topic might be about the recent
upsurge in COVID-19 cases.

Instead it concerned the state of the National Insurance Fund and the need to place the Scheme on a more stable financial footing. This is an issue that should concern all Barbadians. The Press Conference turned out to be arguably the best and most informative piece of Television one has seen for some time.

The speakers were well chosen and all spoke extremely well on the issue. The National Insurance Scheme of 1967 is unquestionably one of the three most important pieces of social legislation passed by any Barbados government in the twentieth century.

The viability of the Barbados National Insurance Scheme is at the heart of the relative social, economic and psychic security that many Barbadians feel. There was a surprisingly high level of agreement
on the issue, given the ostensibly contending constituencies represented on the panel.

Barbados Workers’ Union General Secretary Toni Moore and NationalUnion of Public Workers chief Richard Greene represented Labour while Trisha Tannis, Chair of the Private Sector Association represented the corporate lobby.

It was gratifying to know that DLP President Dr. Ronnie Yearwood was included, a quite magnanimous gesture on the Prime Minister’s part which lends some measure of credibility to her contention that on this issue and in the public interest “all ideas must contend”.

The main speakers were Mr. Derek Osborne and Mr. Rawdon Adams who together outlined the problem in glaringly honest terms. Osborne who had prepared the NIS’ 17TH Actuarial Review, indicated that based on current trends and speaking in presumably more pessimistic terms, the NIS Scheme faces the risk of running out of funds in about twelve years around 2034.

In a slightly more optimistic perspective, that date could be pushed back to 2041.2034 is very alarming but neither date is for our comfort if the Fund continues to pay out more in pension benefits than it is taking in. That’s elementary. Both the Prime Minister and
Mr. Adams assure us that the Scheme is “not in crisis”, at least not at the present moment. But twelve years is a short time.

What time would it take to speak in “crisis” terms?Apart from having differing levels of personalfinancial security, with varying degrees of exposure, individuals suffer different stress and anxiety levels. The persons who are most alarmed at the present condition of the NIS Scheme are those who have made substantial contributions over the years and are approaching retirement in a decade or so.

The initial Press Conference on the need to fix the NIS problem proved highly consensual.

The thorny issue of how to solve it may well prove aggravatingly contentious when we turn to addressing contribution income and cost benefit analysis.What is emerging in the discourse is that there has been some issues relative to the actual management of the Fund that must be confronted.

A caller to Brass Tacks on Friday August 12 when Mr. Glyne Murray was moderator, seemed to have some knowledge of the workings of the National Insurance Office. She highlighted a few inadequacies in that regard. Presumably these concerns can be fixed, hopefully as Murray suggested within the context of an all-embracing model of substantive Civil Service Reform.

The debate since the Mottley Press Conference has revealed certain shortcoming in the NIS current NIS scheme that must be rectified.

1. The Fund has gone some ten years without a financial audit.

2. Too few self-employed persons from professionals to coconut vendors are paying into the scheme. Apparently only 1 in 8 such persons contribute.

3. Governments’ dipping into the Fund for one reason or another.

4. Employers failing to pay in contributions paid by employees.

5. Questions about the current ownership of the property at Paradise Beach.

One sure answer to the NIS problem is to grow the Barbadian economy. However for all the chatter no one seems assured as to how that is to be done. Dr. Justin Robinson recently stated that over the last twenty years the local economy has shown no appreciable growth. For all the talk about an economy “geared for take-off”, about a country “punching above its weight” and “approaching First World status”, the existential reality is that we remain a small vulnerable economy very subject to persistent exogenous shocks. Sometimes one wonders if we are not experiencing what an Economist Magazine writer calls, “the tyranny of over expectation”.

The particular issue on which I would want to contend and with some vehemence is the ridiculous notion that the NIS deficit can somehow be remedied by importing migrants into Barbados. It has been stated by persons seemingly in the know that Barbados does not have enough people to “carry it to the next level”. It has apparently been calculated that the current population needs to be increased by about 80,000 souls.

Given the slow or diminishing birth rate, these souls like so much else need to be imported. The big question is, at what cost? Assuming that the current native population of Barbados is about 290,000, migration at a figure of 80,000 would mean that a quarter of citizenry would be non-Bajan.

In a small island of 166 square miles this is bound to have psychic repercussions as the pressure of population would be easily felt. Barbados is not Canada with wide open spaces. Barbados is too small a country to open up its borders to all and sundry.

The bigger question is; where will the new migrants come from and will their cultures be compatible with ours, with ‘the kind of people that we are’?Will they be Muslim, Hindus or Buddhists, with ways of life very different from our own?

While it is always desirable that all men should dwell together in peace and unity, some cultures, particularly those that are highly endogamous, are innately at variance with others.Will new migrants assimilate to us or, we to them? Will Barbados be segmented into small racial, sometimes antagonistic cocoons even as some
celebrate ‘diversity’?

Will those migrants with great entrepreneurial cultures buy us out as the blacks sink further and further to the bottom as “hewers of wood and drawers of water?” Mass migration could diminish the Bajan sense of identity and belonging.

I once overheard a Barbadian telling another Bajan that he should try to do more for his country. The reply was: “Do more for my country? Wuh I en sure who Barbados belong to now, wuh looka how many foreign people bout hey now. Remember what Errol Barrow said about waking up one morning?”

In an age of vast migrations, there is a continuing debate about its effects. Much of the discourse tends to focus on the economic benefits at the expense of the social implications. The idea seems to be that new migrants will “grow the economy”. This is not a given. Barbados needs invested capital. The question arises how much of the migration involve serious investment.

How much of the migration will consist of poorer people, what Bajansderogatively call ‘scrunters,’ seeking work that could further drive down the wages of resident Barbadians. Many years ago the late Sir Charles Williams said on Brasstacks that he welcomed open labour migration from other Caribbean territories. Why did he say that? The reasoning is obvious. It would force local labour to compete, drive down wage rates and increase profits. Nothing wrong with increasing profit, but not at the expense of wage deterioration even as the cost of living rises.

The theory holds that that an increased population with more persons working will increase revenue growth. A lot will depend on who the immigrants are and what they are going to bring.

A mass increase in the Barbados population over a short period of time will create social havoc and a long term alienation of the native population and it will in no way ensure the economic growth it portends to enhance. Socially it is fraught will challenges.

In attempting to deal with an existential short term problem we run the risk of fundamentally altering the society and culture of Barbados in the long term and to the detriment of our children and grandchildren.

My contention is that large scale migration to Barbados runs contrary to the interests of the majority black working class native population of this country. It is passing strange that we should be contemplating bringing in 80,000 migrant into a Barbados where unemployment runs at around 13 percent, where there is a shortage of housing, where persons have to wait for a day and a half to receive medical attention at the Q.E.H.

The recent long lines outside the Sandals Hotel looking for eye care should tell us that our health services are overburdened.The Mottley administration does not have a particularly good reputation for thinking things through as thoroughly as might be required. Mass migration would be forever and might well alter the compositional makeup of our society.

It would be ironic that a Prime Minister who perennially talks about “the kind of people that we are” would seek to alter “the kind of people that we are”. Governments in Barbados generally have not responded well or efficaciously to the societal issues presented to them. Barbados is not just an economy, it is also a society.

It would be foolhardy to try to solve an economic problem only to find ourselves confronting a social dilemma. What the Mottley administration must tell the Barbadian people whose navel strings are buried here, is what exactly is the BLP planning in relation to mass migration and the people must demand answers.

Ralph Jemmott is a retired educator and regular contributor on social issues.