By Mark DaCosta-At the heart of this matter is a simple proposition advanced by the Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) in its column, The Voice of Labour, of 11 October. Retirement income is wages deferred over decades, and the State and its agencies owe workers the correct sum, calculated openly and paid on time. That principle is now being tested in the High Court, where pensioners and three trade unions allege that the National Insurance Scheme (NIS) has been underpaying its most vulnerable retirees.
The timing of the GTUC’s intervention is hard to ignore. Days before its column appeared, attorney-at-law Christopher Ram, himself a pensioner, joined a second pensioner and three unions in filing an application against the National Insurance Board. They are represented by Christopher Ram and fellow attorney Khemraj Ramjattan. The court is asked to decide what the Board is legally bound to do when the minimum old-age pension must be adjusted. The applicants contend that the Board failed to keep those payments in step with increases in the public service minimum wage.
By their reckoning, each minimum pensioner is short by $8,098 a month, and the accumulated arrears could approach $510,300 per person. They want those arrears paid with statutory interest. They also want the matter resolved quickly, because those affected are elderly and many live close to the margin.
The GTUC’s column does not mention the litigation, but it reads like its moral backdrop. The union body begins from the premise that a pension is not charity. It describes the entitlement as “a matter of justice, dignity and accountability”, and it warns that workers who contribute for decades should not meet “unexplained deductions, missing contributions, incorrect calculations” at the end of their careers.
For public servants, the Congress points to Article 149B of the Constitution, which grants “an absolute and enforceable right to any pension or gratuity” arising under law or collective agreement. Its reading is that government employers cannot treat such benefits as favours to be dispensed or withheld. They must keep accurate service records, honour negotiated agreements and explain themselves when calculations are disputed.
The position of private-sector and other insured workers rests on the National Insurance and Social Security Act. Under the Scheme’s published rules, a person generally qualifies for an old-age pension at 60 with at least 150 contributions actually paid and 750 paid or credited. Those who reach that age with at least 50 contributions but fall short of the pension threshold may receive a grant instead.
The GTUC stresses that such thresholds make the integrity of each contribution record decisive. It therefore urges workers to examine their NIS histories, keep payslips and query gaps without delay. It insists that no worker should “bear the consequences” of an employer’s failure to remit what was deducted from wages. That responsibility, it says, belongs to negligent employers and to an administration obliged to keep reliable books.
Accuracy is the Congress’s recurring theme.
“Receiving a pension is not enough if the amount is wrong,” it states.
The Scheme’s own guidance sets a floor at half the public service minimum wage and a ceiling at 60 per cent of average weekly insurable earnings, with a formula tied to earnings and contribution history. The applicants’ case turns on how that floor should move over time, and it is the sort of technical question on which a retiree cannot realistically contend alone.
The Congress also looks beyond our borders. The International Labour Organisation’s Social Security (Minimum Standards) Convention of 1952 sets international benchmarks for old-age protection. According to the ILO’s records, Guyana has not ratified it. The GTUC therefore treats it as a yardstick for improvement rather than a binding obligation, and it urges the nation to strengthen protections and widen access to information.
The human consequences of delay supply the litigation with its urgency. Before filing, Mr Ram and the unions gave the NIS seven days to state its position or its legal basis for disputing liability, warning that silence would mean court action. He has since cited long-stalled cases to illustrate the problem. One is Nathan Craig, aged 81, whose favourable tribunal decision was appealed by the Scheme and left unresolved for years.
Another is Shariff Zainul, a bedridden contributor whose benefits were refused because an employer never remitted contributions. When requests for interim relief or advances were declined, Mr Ram says, the Scheme’s insistence that claimants go to court left litigation as the only route to compliance. These are the applicants’ assertions, and the Board’s answer will be tested before the judge.
To prevent such disputes, the GTUC proposes a package of reforms. It wants entitlements calculated accurately and paid promptly, and tighter monitoring of employer remittances. It also wants workers to have easy access to their contribution histories and the workings behind their pensions. It seeks efficient procedures for investigating complaints and correcting underpayments, protection for pensioners from bureaucratic delay, and decisions that are properly explained. Finally, it asks that trade unions be brought into pension policy reviews.
Behind these technical demands lies a broader argument about national priorities. In an era of oil revenues and record budgets, the Congress contends that progress should be judged by more than “economic growth, oil revenues or national budgets”. It should also be judged by how the country treats those whose labour sustains it. Those who served “must not be left to fight alone” for what they have lawfully earned, it says, and pension security is “inseparable from workers’ dignity”.
The coming weeks will show whether the courtroom or the negotiating table brings relief first. Whatever the outcome, the case has made the question unavoidable. If a pension is “deferred income earned through work,” then the correct amount, paid on time, is a duty owed to citizens who have already given their working lives. The GTUC’s closing line puts it plainly:
“Workers built the wealth.”
