Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

Se­nior Re­porter

eliz­a­beth.gon­za­les@guardian.co.tt

Work­ers at the Jack Warn­er-owned Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence claim that salary de­duc­tions for Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Sur­charge (NIS) are not be­ing re­mit­ted to the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB).

Warn­er is a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, MP and for­mer FI­FA vice pres­i­dent.

Work­ers’ NIB state­ments re­viewed by Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk showed con­tri­bu­tions record­ed up to 2021, with no pay­ments re­flect­ed from 2022 to 2026.

Em­ploy­ees said they on­ly dis­cov­ered the is­sue af­ter check­ing their records with the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board (NIB), rais­ing con­cerns that statu­to­ry de­duc­tions were be­ing tak­en even as no con­tri­bu­tions were be­ing cred­it­ed.

“Every­thing was com­ing out of our salaries as nor­mal,” one work­er said. “We had no rea­son to be­lieve any­thing was wrong.”

The work­ers said that when they queried the mat­ter, they were in­formed that the miss­ing pay­ments were due to a glitch in the NIB’s sys­tem.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk un­der­stands that the out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions ac­cu­mu­lat­ed over sev­er­al years and now amount to in ex­cess of $1 mil­lion.

Sev­er­al work­ers charged that month­ly NIS de­duc­tions con­tin­ued, ap­pear­ing on payslips, even as their of­fi­cial con­tri­bu­tion his­to­ries re­mained un­changed over a mul­ti-year pe­ri­od with no for­mal com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the com­pa­ny.

One work­er claimed she was ini­tial­ly told the miss­ing con­tri­bu­tions were the re­sult of a sys­tem is­sue at the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board, but be­came in­creas­ing­ly con­cerned af­ter re­peat­ed checks con­tin­ued to show no pay­ments over sev­er­al years.

Work­ers across the or­gan­i­sa­tion claimed the gap af­fects dozens of staff, with some es­ti­mat­ing that more than 40 em­ploy­ees may be im­pact­ed. They said the con­se­quences are sig­nif­i­cant, par­tic­u­lar­ly for those near­ing re­tire­ment.

Miss­ing con­tri­bu­tions can af­fect el­i­gi­bil­i­ty for pen­sions and oth­er ben­e­fits, in­clud­ing sick­ness and ma­ter­ni­ty claims, as well as the over­all val­ue of a work­er’s re­tire­ment in­come.

“It’s years of con­tri­bu­tions miss­ing,” one em­ploy­ee said. “That is peo­ple’s fu­ture.”

Some said at­tempts to raise con­cerns in­ter­nal­ly were met with re­sis­tance.

“Peo­ple were told not to cause con­fu­sion,” one em­ploy­ee al­leged.

Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk un­der­stands that the de­vel­op­ment comes as the or­gan­i­sa­tion pre­pares for a re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, with em­ploy­ees fear­ing lay­offs could take place be­fore the out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions are ad­dressed, leav­ing work­ers with­out ac­cess to ben­e­fits tied to those pay­ments.

Af­ter years of be­ing chair­man, last month Warn­er passed on chair­man­ship of the or­gan­i­sa­tion to his son, Daryll Warn­er.

The younger Warn­er could not be reached for com­ment on the NIS re­mit­tance mat­ter.

Jack Warn­er al­so could not be reached for com­ment. When Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk at­tempt­ed to con­tact him via his mo­bile phone, a man who re­fused to iden­ti­fy him­self an­swered and ques­tioned why Warn­er was be­ing con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, re­fer­ring all queries to the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence’s ex­ec­u­tive.

Sev­er­al em­ploy­ees have since sub­mit­ted doc­u­ments, in­clud­ing TD4 forms, to the NIB to sup­port their claims.

At least one work­er said the Board ac­knowl­edged re­ceipt and in­di­cat­ed the mat­ter was un­der re­view.

When con­tact­ed, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer and Gen­er­al Man­ag­er Joanne Mo­ra de­clined to an­swer ques­tions sent via email, stat­ing, “This is a pri­vate com­pa­ny. I have noth­ing to di­vulge.”

Ef­forts to con­tact NIB

For the past three weeks, Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk con­tact­ed the NIB for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether con­tri­bu­tions from the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence were re­ceived for the pe­ri­od 2022 to present, and whether any sys­tem is­sues could ac­count for the dis­crep­an­cies. Emails, fol­low-up emails and calls to the com­pa­ny’s cor­po­rate com­mu­ni­ca­tions de­part­ment were un­suc­cess­ful.

Emails were al­so sent and calls were made to NIB ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor Niala Per­sad-Po­li­ah, but all at­tempts proved fu­tile, even af­ter com­mit­ments by NIB to re­spond were giv­en more than once.

How­ev­er, NIB sources con­firmed the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence has not been in full com­pli­ance.

“I can say with­out a doubt that we have ac­tu­al­ly em­ployed ILAND to up­date all our con­tri­bu­tions, but the is­sue that we’ve had in the past and some­thing that has per­sist­ed is em­ploy­ers take the con­tri­bu­tion from the em­ploy­ees and do not re­mit it to the NIB.”

The of­fi­cial pushed back against claims of a sys­tem glitch, say­ing ILAND can up­date con­tri­bu­tion records, but it can­not post pay­ments that em­ploy­ers nev­er re­mit­ted.

Work­ers said they are not con­fi­dent the miss­ing pay­ments will be made be­fore the com­pa­ny is re­struc­tured.