Jesse Ramdeo

Mem­bers of the pub­lic have said they are at their wits end over the de­lays in ac­cess­ing ser­vices at one of the Na­tion­al In­sur­ance Board’s of­fices.

Con­cerned cit­i­zens have been reach­ing out to Guardian Me­dia to vent their frus­tra­tions over the al­leged ob­struc­tions in pro­cess­ing doc­u­ments.

At the NIBTT’s Cen­tral of­fice on Eleanor Street, in Ch­agua­nas, cit­i­zens were seen queued un­der a tent yes­ter­day, some re­port­ed wait­ing for hours.

A man, who spoke with Guardian Me­dia off-cam­era, stressed that de­spite the NIBTT’s best ef­forts, the pro­cess­ing of claims must be more ef­fi­cient.

He said “ For the past six months, I’ve been com­ing here, every time you come here they telling you it pro­cess­ing..its pro­cess­ing that is it. You re­tire now you can’t get your gov­ern­ment ben­e­fits, you cant get your NIS ben­e­fits, but when to pay they tak­ing it up­front, now when time to get pay is all kind of run around.”

Last month, the NIBTT ad­vised that full walk-in ser­vices would re­sume on Sep­tem­ber 1st, al­low­ing the pub­lic to ac­cess fu­ner­al grants, con­tri­bu­tion state­ments, and ben­e­fit let­ters among oth­er.

How­ev­er, the or­gan­i­sa­tion ad­vised that claims sub­mis­sions will con­tin­ue on an ap­point­ment ba­sis.

An­oth­er per­son sug­gest­ed that staff can be bet­ter utilised to pre­vent the lengthy de­lays.

He said, “If it have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive by the door, there are cer­tain things that the peo­ple will be able to an­swer be­fore even tak­ing a num­ber to sit down be­cause they will be qual­i­fied to an­swer the ques­tions right there at the door, it’s not every­thing you need to go in­side for.”

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the NIBTT’s of­fice on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain as well as its head of­fice on Cipri­ani Boule­vard, but no lines or crowds were ob­served.

In a re­sponse, NIBTT stat­ed that due to the pan­dem­ic, busi­ness op­er­a­tional de­ci­sions such as staff ros­ter­ing and ro­ta­tion were made which im­pact­ed ser­vice de­liv­ery.

It said as it moves to­wards en­hanc­ing tech­nol­o­gy, it is ex­pect­ed that re­sponse times will be im­proved