NIS GOING BUST BUT…

THE National Insurance System – working people’s social welfare programme – is going bust.

In its latest report on Trinidad and Tobago, the International Monetary Fund confirmed what actuaries have been saying for years: That NIS would go belly-up within a decade.

That means no pension payments for hundreds of thousands of contributors.

There is even more shocking news.

“IMF staff welcomes the authorities’ proposal to increase the retirement age to 65 years,” the document stated.

So, for the plan to remain afloat, no benefits would be granted until that age, even though life expectancy in T&T is 74.

The IMF’s emphatic statement did not stir any responses.

The condition of the working masses – sufferers, Black Stalin called us – continues to deteriorate in a land in which large corporations are raking in bigger and bigger profits.

A conglomerate just announced a 12.5 per cent hike in annual profit.

The conglomerate sector, according to an investment firm’s analysis of the Stock Exchange, is expected to report average increased profits of 15 per cent in 2023.

But even as the quality of their lives continues to fall, many in the labouring class are otherwise engaged in social media ethnic muckraking.

In France, however, working people have been hitting the streets for weeks in protest of President Emmanuel Macron’s proposal to lift the retirement age from 62 to 64.

One day this week, one-tenth of the French national population took part in a total of 240 street rallies.

Trade unions branded Macron’s measure as oppression, and vowed to maintain opposition.

In T&T, organised labour is dead to the world.

Unemployment, meanwhile, is at 22 per cent, the cost of food has gone up by 60 per cent since 2018, and wages – for the 30 per cent represented by trade unions – have risen by an average of two per cent.

Finance Minister Colm Imbert – who infamously said “they haven’t rioted yet” after the first of five fuel price increases – hurriedly called a media conference to respond to the IMF.

Trying to play smart with foolishness, Imbert insisted that no decision has been taken on the retirement age.

But he didn’t have to get flustered.

Defenders of the masses are indifferent, and the grassroots are engaged in senseless race-baiting.

But multinational Digicel did not examine ethnic heritage when it sent home 126 workers this week.

The move by the telecom giant is another graphic example of the bleeding of foreign investments.

In less than a decade, T&T has moved from attracting investments to an annual value of US $1.5 billion, to an average yearly loss of US $450 million.

Ironically, telecom infrastructure was once a main attraction of foreign investors.

Trade Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon, blissfully naive as ever, credited Digicel for firing the workers “lawfully,” ignoring that this is yet another example of big business thumbing its nose at T&T.

Then, a study says the poverty level – people who can’t afford to put food on the table – is more than 30 per cent.

So, joblessness is climbing, the national insurance plan is on its last legs, and the number of poor and malnourished is expanding.

And what is the working class doing?

Aggressively attacking each other on their ethnic ancestry!