Each week, the Guardian An­gel col­umn high­lights com­plaints sent in by you, the con­sumer, and pro­vides so­lu­tions or di­rects you to the ap­pro­pri­ate re­source.

Prob­lem: Mr All­man Samuel said he worked as a spe­cial re­serve po­lice of­fi­cer for over 20 years.He said, "I ap­plied for my NIS ben­e­fits and was paid a lump sum al­though I am en­ti­tled to a month­ly pen­sion. Ow­ing to the fire at Po­lice Head­quar­ters in 1990, all records were de­stroyed."I was giv­en sev­er­al let­ters from my em­ploy­ers con­firm­ing my length of em­ploy­ment but to date I am still wait­ing for my ben­e­fits."The NIS state­ment shows the con­tri­bu­tions that are miss­ing up to 1990, af­ter which all con­tri­bu­tions are okay."

So­lu­tion: When con­tact­ed, NIB said Mr Samuel's file was for­ward­ed to the of­fice of the ex­ec­u­tive man­ag­er of in­sur­ance op­er­a­tions and would be re­viewed by the board's Claims Re­view Com­mit­tee.

Prob­lem: Hazel Kistow-Vasquez said, "I am a Trinida­di­an cur­rent­ly re­sid­ing in Flori­da and on a re­cent vis­it home, I went in­to the NIB of­fice in Port-of-Spain to ask about the pro­ce­dure to claim NIS ben­e­fits."Af­ter check­ing the com­put­er, the em­ploy­ee told me that I on­ly qual­i­fied for a one-time pay­out, be­cause I did not have suf­fi­cient de­duc­tions. I was giv­en a form to com­plete, which re­quired the names of all the places I've worked in Trinidad."

But Ms Kistow-Vasquez said, "Since I left home over 25 years ago, I do not re­mem­ber the names of all the places I've worked, and the dates I was em­ployed."How can I en­sure that de­duc­tions were ac­cu­rate­ly made on my be­half?"So­lu­tion: NIB ex­plained that the ap­pli­ca­tion form for the re­tire­ment ben­e­fit asks the in­sured per­son to in­di­cate the pe­ri­ods and places em­ployed be­tween 1972 and their re­tire­ment date. The rea­son for this is that the NIB needs to en­sure that it pays the right ben­e­fit to the right peo­ple.

There are in­stances where em­ploy­ers may not sub­mit pay­ments for the en­tire tenure of em­ploy­ment for in­di­vid­u­als, and as a re­sult NIB needs to match what the in­sured per­son in­di­cates to what is in the sys­tem and in­ves­ti­gate any pos­si­ble dis­crep­an­cies. This may make the dif­fer­ence as to whether some­one qual­i­fies for the grant or pen­sion. The onus is on the in­sured per­son to give the in­for­ma­tion.

If some­one can­not re­call their pe­ri­ods of em­ploy­ment, then they may sub­mit a let­ter say­ing so, how­ev­er, the ap­pli­ca­tion will be set­tled with the avail­able con­tri­bu­tions on NIB's sys­tem.