“Win­ter is com­ing” for delin­quent em­ploy­ers who don’t take ad­van­tage of the up­com­ing amnesty to set­tle their out­stand­ing Na­tion­al In­sur­ance pay­ments.

Some 4,000 em­ploy­ers are fraud­u­lent­ly not mak­ing NIS con­tri­bu­tions - and af­ter the amnesty ends in De­cem­ber, the State will go af­ter delin­quent com­pa­nies, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning warned yes­ter­day.

He was speak­ing in the Sen­ate while pi­lot­ing the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance (Amend­ment) Bill 2022. It pro­vides for an amnesty from Ju­ly 31 to De­cem­ber 31, 2020, im­ple­ment­ing a waiv­er of penal­ties/in­ter­est on non-pay­ment of NIS con­tri­bu­tions. It al­so stip­u­lates sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er fines for the pro­vi­sion of false in­for­ma­tion and in­creas­es the statu­to­ry lim­i­ta­tion for the com­mence­ment of sum­ma­ry pro­ceed­ings and oth­er re­lat­ed mat­ters

The amnesty is open to com­pa­nies reg­is­tered with the NIB pri­or to June 2022 and those reg­is­tered dur­ing the waiv­er pe­ri­od. It will place NIB on a bet­ter foot­ing to ex­e­cute its man­date and ben­e­fit cit­i­zens with its range of ser­vices, Man­ning said.

He said the waiv­er will al­low com­pa­nies to “do the right thing” and could as­sist where com­pa­nies couldn’t make pay­ments dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

“This (amnesty) is re­flec­tive of a Gov­ern­ment that’s aware of dif­fi­cul­ties faced by small/medi­um en­ter­pris­es - a Gov­ern­ment that cares.”

He said NIS non-pay­ment de­prives peo­ple - es­pe­cial­ly in low-in­come groups - of ac­cess to much-need­ed ben­e­fits, while en­rich­ing the cof­fers of em­ploy­ers who’ve avoid­ed mak­ing pay­ments.

“This Gov­ern­ment is work­ing to ad­dress this is­sue through in­tro­duc­tion of this bill and when the waiv­er pe­ri­od is over, penal­ties will be so ad­just­ed to de­ter the will­ing­ness to breach.

“I say to those who have been will­ful­ly with­hold­ing their NIS con­tri­bu­tions, that they should get their house in or­der and pay now be­cause win­ter is com­ing,” Man­ning added.

On In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira’s queries, Man­ning said Gov­ern­ment in­tro­duced a method of de­tect­ing delin­quent com­pa­nies and it was es­ti­mat­ed that 4,000 em­ploy­ers are fraud­u­lent­ly not mak­ing con­tri­bu­tions.

He didn’t have in­for­ma­tion on how much is owed but promised to pro­vide it ahead. Con­cur­ring with Vieira’s con­cern for NIB to get se­ri­ous with en­force­ment, Man­ning said, “That’s ex­act­ly what I’m say­ing - we’ve im­proved de­tec­tion and are much bet­ter at this point at see­ing which em­ploy­ers aren’t in com­pli­ance with the law.

“And ab­solute­ly - af­ter the amnesty pe­ri­od - we’re go­ing to go af­ter these delin­quent em­ploy­ers.”

De­tail­ing claus­es in­clud­ing big fines for false in­for­ma­tion, Man­ning em­pha­sised, “As I said, win­ter is com­ing.”

Heat for Govt says Mark

Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark, who called for the bill to be with­drawn, said it wasn’t win­ter that was com­ing, but heat was com­ing for Gov­ern­ment.

“If I break the law I’ll get charged, but they’re bring­ing an amend­ment to re­ward a con­fed­er­a­cy of wrong-do­ers, law break­ers ... peo­ple who sup­posed to be in jail for not ho­n­our­ing oblig­a­tions to work­ers.. any em­ploy­er who fails to sub­mit pay­ments which were de­duct­ed from work­ers’ salaries is guilty of em­bez­zle­ment...fraud!”

Say­ing the bill was pro-em­ploy­er, Mark said in an­oth­er coun­try, there might have been ac­tion on the streets.

“But I don’t know why our peo­ple so? How can a Gov­ern­ment come with this?!”

Call­ing for more de­tails, he added, “We want to know the names of the com­pa­nies (ow­ing), are they PNM’s fi­nanciers? Give us a list of the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of this waiv­er and the sum of (owed)!”

List­ing the bill’s pro­vi­sion, he said, “These kinds of things were hap­pen­ing un­der Marie An­toinette (of France) - you know what hap­pen to Marie An­toinette?! You play­ing with fire! You pro­vok­ing the pop­u­la­tion with these mea­sures. I’m not a lawyer, I’m a bush lawyer but I think I un­der­stand what I’m read­ing.”

Amid Mark’s yelling, Sen­ate Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo warned him about his lan­guage be­com­ing “in­creas­ing­ly in­flam­ma­to­ry” and urged him to “di­al it back.”