 Welcome to the Information Command Center as St. Lucia continues to mitigate COVID-19. And today we have a subject matter that is at the forefront of the minds of all of St. Lucia. We're talking about the National Insurance Corporation and we know that the government of St. Lucia, along with the NIC, they're making provisions to be able to give financial support, income support to St. Lucia to have been so devastatingly affected by COVID-19. In with me is the director of the National Insurance Corporation, Mr. Matthew Mathera, the head of Group Internal Audit, who is Mrs. Sue Ann Chalry Payne, and the communications manager, McNaughton McLean. Gentlemen and ladies, thank you so much for coming in. We know that solutions as I indicated at the forefront of their minds is really how the NIC, since the announcement was made, is able to meet the demand that is out there regarding the sort of support that you're providing to them for those of the thousands of St. Lucia to have now been rendered unemployed by the COVID-19. Let's start with you, Mr. Matthew Mathera, the director of NIC, perhaps just to encapsulate the very beginning of what happened. We know COVID-19 came in, we heard about the thousands of St. Lucia who were rendered unemployed as a result, and the NIC decided that it can step in, bearing in mind that St. Lucia does not have the sort of unemployment benefit program. So from the NIC's perspective, you believed that you were able to rise to the occasion and meet that demand. Yes, good day, Madam moderator, and good day to your viewers. And I want to thank you for offering us the opportunity to come here to try to clarify some of the issues that you and the viewers may have. Well, the enactment of the Sartor instrument number 64, which was detailed on the 24th of April, empowered the National Insurance Corporation to launch its economic relief program. And that was to help NIC contributors navigate the economic hardship which was brought about by the coronavirus epidemic. Now, already the intention of the NIC at the time was to consider a three-month program, and the decision was taken to launch a three-month program. The intention had always been that should the conditions merit it, and if it was affordable, that this would be extended to a six-month period, or we would extend the program. We have noted that if we look at the conditions, that the tourism sector, and a lot of what is happening now actually was in play at the start of the program. The tourism sector had been expected to resume operations in July 2020. However, many of the hotels that were expected to spearhead the resumption have since delayed reopening to after July, and those that do open will be opening with reduced staff due to significantly reduced occupancy. And as you know, one of the sizable hotel in the south has already issued redundancy notices to its staff. Of course, the various sectors of the economy are linked, and the significantly high level of persons from the hotel sector who remain unemployed is very likely to impact negatively on the other sectors. Now, if you look at the news that we've been hearing recently, for example, the WHO records the highest daily increase in global coronavirus cases, and it was prompting low-income countries to take heed of this thing. And that was on May 20th when it did a number of daily infection jumps to over 150,000. And as of yesterday, 1st of July, that number shot to 196,000 persons. Recently, June 19th, the cruise lines voluntarily suspended all trips out of the U.S. ports until September 15th. Now, members of that trade group had previously been on a mandatory sort of order that they should have stayed in port until July 24th. They unilaterally extended that. Just on June 30th, the EU banned American visitors from entering its shores, entering its waters. And over the last few days, the U.S. has continued to experience a record-breaking daily number of infections. Even now, most of the states are starting to roll back reopening plans. They either slowing it down or they're reversing it, and they're now starting to impose restrictions on businesses. Now, in making this decision, like I said, the NICR had to consider the affordability of the program. And we solicited actuarial input to determine that whatever we'd be spending would not compromise the fund. And based on that, we were able to decide on the three-month program where we sort of projected the cost of between 30 to 80 million dollars for the three months. And that depended on which scenario we followed. So if it was at the low end where we thought maybe a few number of persons would have been unemployed, then we were looking at the $30 million figure. In fact, looking at it now, the projections for the three months are looking in the region of $35 million. And if we were to go the six months, we're looking at an amount not exceeding $80 million. So the figure we have projected for the three months as a maximum worst case scenario figure is a maximum we now expect for the three months. So on that basis, all the conditions were in the slot for the board to agree to an extension of the program. Let's hear from... Thank you so much for that, Director. Mrs. Payne, from your end of things, being able now to sort of galvanize the support that would have been needed to meet the demand, how was that process? I'm just going to describe that to us. The process of meeting the demand for NIC being able to... Yes, because you didn't have that sort of system already existed. And so, being able to get that system operational. Because I think that is perhaps one of the things that they sort of disconnect with the public. Because the public is assuming that the NIC would have been up and ready to go because. So what was missing in order for you not to be able to meet that demand? I will let Suad come in because she had a big battle, but I want to just give a broad overview. Because our board met on a Saturday, the 20th of March, when we considered what was happening, to decide whether we should go ahead with that program. And the board met on a Saturday, at that time, it was closed down, everywhere was shut down, I think. And we had to have a Zoom meeting. We had to get legislation passed. And the legislation to give us the power to move this thing was done on the 24th of April. And then, after that, we had to put the systems in place. And so, I will come in just now. We had to put systems in place to accept applications. We had to accept employee information. We had to look into application information, to link the application information that came in through the portal with what we had on the NIC database. We had to have great systems. We had to have great systems that accommodated a massive increase in traffic. Because remember, our site was not designed to take design. And you know, even countries have a lot more resources than us. As soon as they opened up to, for example, Obamacare or whatever it was, it didn't crash, right? So, we had to put things in place to upgrade our system at a time, again, when everywhere around the place was shut down. We had to reallocate staff from other duties to deal with this new program. And again, we know what the NIC was set up to do. We were set up to pay the existing slate of many benefits, sickness, maternity, and the long-term ones like survivors and retirement, et cetera. And the 10%, well, the five and the five, five employer, five employee, is the premium to pay for these services, okay? It does not have anything in it for the ER program which we're doing there. So, it was something that the board had to make a decision on and have legislative authority to do so, which is why we had to wait for the legislative authority. Which came a full month after we had been hearing that the NIC would have been providing this support. And because, and you know, it's not just amount of legislation, here is a piece of paper, there's a lot of to and fro. We had to, the AG's office with a significant role in that and I was in the legal counsel and there was a lot of to and fro to make sure the legislation was right. And then the legislation passed on the 24th of April. So, and then, at the same time, we have all the staff reallocated because we had to put people in for vacation. All of the inspectors, we had to pull them in and put them into that program. And remember, we're making that as we go along because we have a system which is not designed for that. So, you have to be programming it constantly and the programmers who are at home are working day and night to get this thing out. And then we had to reorient our operations to a more online system because, again, we were in the, we, though we had some online facilities, we were more in the, our operations were more get towards the traditional face-to-face physical documentation. So, all of these things we had to be doing in that short space of time. And at the same time, we had to make sure we're putting controls in place because as you would recently in the United States, after they took months, remember they just sent a check to everybody. But my brother was in the Bahamas and he got a check. And so, they sent checks to everybody. It took months after they passed the legislation in Congress to enact this thing. And after they did that, they were paying dead people. Billions of dollars to dead people. Now, think of it, if the NIC were to do something like this, or there was a certain level of fraud which was detected, the very same people who gave the slicks, for taking too long would say that, look, they've been contributing money. Have you not been careful enough? And Suwan had a significant role in, because she was paying in the program first. And she had a significant role in making sure we put in the controls in place to ensure that we get that list without some of the, you know, some people always try a thing in our global past. Some of the things that came in which would not meet the requirements for this thing. So, I don't know if Suwan could probably build on, and give you a little more detail because she was instrumental in managing other systems or anything like that. In how you were able to make sure the ship was running tight? Yes, I mean, in addition to what the director was saying, IT obviously was key to getting all of this pulled together because we had to go electronic, both for efficiency and to reduce the level of inaccuracy from manual intervention. We had to wait for the legislation to be passed because that informed the program, that informed what we can accept, what the qualifying criteria was, and so on. So that was key to getting it all pulled together. Controls, definitely, and that is built in from the beginning of the receipt of the applications, the online e-form. Configuring our program, pulling in resources while continuing to maintain the regular mandate of the NIC, trying to juggle staff. We have done quite a bit in terms of bringing in some persons who were employed in NIC before, were familiar with the system, just to build out capacity to some extent because we needed to do that. IT being key, brought on additional IT persons who are external, whatever resources that we needed to help facilitate that, we did. And you must understand, with social distancing, we cannot pack people into the building. So in as much as we wanted to bring other staff in, we'd have to get space for them. And right now, we have most of our staff in, a few, very few working from home right now, and we're looking at some space on the floor to see if we could, on the other floor to see if we could fit in some of the persons because we anticipate that this thing has not ended. And if what's happening in the United States right now, because most of the increase is in our part of the hemisphere. Prior to that, it was near on the other side. Now, the rate of increase, the number of persons every day is a lot higher than what it used to be at the height of the pandemic. We have to take precautions. So right now, we've been planning for how we'll accommodate meeting our mandate should this pandemic again touch our shores. So let's talk some numbers now. McNaughton, give us a sense of how many applications to date that they, not necessarily process, but to date that you've received. Well, I can tell you, we've processed over 21,000 applications to date. And that would have been as of last night, over 21,000. We have made over 18,500 payments to individuals. And the average payout per individual is $830 and 16 cents. That's per payment. And the grand total paid is 15 million, 15.3 million, they're about, that's the total payout to date under the economic relief program. And you will note that the average will be increasing because in the first month, we had persons who were on vacation that would be getting income from the employers. They may have been getting salaries from the employers. So you find that based on the program, we would give you what you would be entitled on the NIC, less whatever you'd have gotten from the employers. Most of that would disappear in May. So you find that the amounts would be increasing in May. So where the average was about 800 or 700 and something in the 790s in April, now it's climbing up. So now it's $830 and it will keep going up as more and more persons appeared. Now we want to be able to break it down so people can understand. We're hearing lots of people saying what March is the NIC paying out for the month of March. No. The program covers the months of April, May and June. And the extension now will cover the additional months of July, August and September. So for better understanding, why not the month of March? Because we had the shutdown happening in the month of March. It was the end of March, 23rd of March, most people would have received wages by then. And the more you just do not jump into something, one. Number two, we had to have a decision of our board because this is not, remember, we did not have the legislation for that. So there had to have been some consultations. We had to be liaison if our actuary to determine whether it was cost effective and not compromise the National Child's Cooperation Fund. And so all of that would take time. And eventually, well, we had to get the legislation. We had the legislation was enacted and that gave us authority to go ahead. And with that, we were able to go ahead. Now, also, had we had to go back to March, there would be a lot more complications it would have delayed the process even more because it was not as clicker than March. Businesses were operating, some were not, persons were on vacation. It would have been very difficult for us to deliver it then. So we had to go when the authorization was given after we had everything in front of us and we knew what we were doing. So have we been able to cover all of the month of April for those people who applied? Are you saying in months? Yeah, I think it's about 90, 70%. Yeah, the thing is applications continue to come in. So whilst we process for April, May and June, persons are still applying for April currently. So there's always a catch up for April. And so even if someone were to apply in the month of July, they would be able, you would be able to pay them retroactively for the periods of April, May and June. Once we have the information to support it because they start, end of a, they start, start of layoff date or the last date of employment, if it shows that it was prior to April then it would be entitled once they met all of the other qualifying criteria and the employer also confirmed that they were. We have seen that a lot when it comes to persons who seem to have been having technical difficulties with the form. It took them up to now, persons are still, I guess those persons were not as IT savvy. So we've seen those applications coming in now. I must add also that we did make some arrangements for persons who did not have access and they were able to go to the ICT centers and they were assisted. We made arrangements that they would call and would make the appointments and they would go at the appointed time and the technicians would assist them because they're very familiar with the form. The problem we had was in castries because there's not an ICT center close to castries but we have made some arrangements at our office now where a number of the persons in and around castries do come to our offices to complete the ERP application form. So that has assisted a great deal. Yeah, but there would be another very significant factor in that people were given incorrect information. Absolutely. And you'd find that, for example, if you have a wrong bank account number, the bank would send the money back. Now the bank would send back the money without any details so you have to go back and do a lot of tracing. And remember, you have thousands of claims to process so then you cannot take two minutes resources on those. But we do try to deliver those and Mark will probably later, or if you will now give an indication of those kind of problems that we seem to come across. Yeah, I think one of the principle issues that we have in is the account information. People seem to put the wrong, maybe people aren't aware of what really is the correct bank account information. We see a lot of ATM card numbers and in some instances even the PIN is inserted on the form as the account information. The other problem that you have, people put the bank where they transact business, rather the branch where they transact business rather than the branch where it was opened. That will require the bank code. So all of that, the money comes back to us. We have issues where the information submitted by the employer does not match what was submitted by the employee. So you see the lay of debt, for instance, or the amount of vacation pay or stipend or financial assistance differs from what is indicated in the employer portal also on the C-free forms when we run the checks. So all of these things also delay some of the processing, N9 numbers. And this can happen in number transposition. Simple thing that instead of putting a one, you put a three or a four. But while it may seem trivial, it is because it's absolutely because once the system picks up the inconsistencies, then this thing goes into a querying. And somebody has to investigate that claim to try and address the issue. It takes some time. For the most part, people don't seem to want to accept that these are some of the issues. But I think once we explain it to them, they get a better sense of appreciation for the hard work that it takes for us to clear those issues. Some of the other issues, the contribution on records submitted in the C-free form from the employee was reported to be on layoff. In some cases, that individual worked for April. But so the claim is this allowed for the period, only the month of April. But for the other period, once the conditions remain that you're not employed, then you will get your payment on the EIP. Now this is a continual application process that one must go through. So each month that I remain unemployed, I need to apply? No, one application. However, the employer would need to upload information if the circumstances change on via the employer portal, and that is accessible on the NIC website. Why aren't the employers finding it so difficult to get the form filled out and have it accurate on the full score? I think so, it's the one with the employers. Yeah, I mean, with everything else that is new, I think it takes some time to adjust and familiarize yourself. So the first period, getting the April period up and running would be the most challenging. We try to include as much detail, explanatory notes as to what is expected on both on the portal itself and in a guidance tutorial document that we had published to assist employers in completing those forms. One of the major issues we seem to have had in terms of understanding the completion of the form on the employer's part is the section that speaks to any monies paid to those individuals. We got a lot of that in the sense that in the beginning, the first round, the April round, the first upload, there seem to have been a misunderstanding between amounts that are normally paid to employees in terms of salary and amount that were actually paid to persons during the lay-off period. So you would find an employer may have entered, if somebody earns, say, $3,000 for the month, in the column that asks how much was contributed to that person in the lay-off period. In keeping with the act, whatever that amount was, it would be deducted from the entitlement on the ERP because they would have earned a financial benefit then. Because of the inaccuracy in understanding that, you found persons would have included the salary amounts in there that would have resulted, obviously, in a reduced payout, that would have should have been had it been an actual financial assistance given to the individual. These were clarified and you would find employers would have come back and corrected it. We don't anticipate that issue come May and June and to help ease the administrative burden on the part of the employers. We have gone ahead and rolled over the information submitted in April to be applicable for May and June, given employer sending an email out to employers, asking them whether there are no changes. It gives an IC to go ahead to use that same information to complete the following months. So there's no obligation on the part of the employers to come back to the portal if the information remains the same, whatever information was submitted for April remains the same. If, however, there are changes in the information, there's the expectation and it's important for NIC's purposes to know that people are still unemployed or they're not earning any income or even in cases where they were legitimate amounts, financial assistance paid to some persons in April. Because we have rolled over that information to May, if employers are not updating us to say this amount was only paid for April, not for May, and go in and remove the amounts in May, and I see with process on the understanding that these amounts are paid again and you get the risk of, I guess, on the paying somebody. So we send the email out to employers seeking the assistance in providing that information. If there are no changes, the chest reply is saying no changes. We get the go ahead to continue to process for those persons. So this is heavily dependent on the employers being very proactive and playing their part. Playing their part, yes, for the benefit of their employees. Yes. All right, we'll take a very short break. When we come back, we'll be continuing the discussion and of course we are taking your question so you can place those on the Facebook platform and be happy to pose those questions to the panel and we do have quite a bit coming in. So stay with us. We'll be back shortly. As part of government's social stabilization plan to assist persons who have lost their means of earning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the government of St. Lucia has implemented the Income Support Program where non-contributors to the NIC shall receive a monthly payment of $500 for the next three months. Taxi drivers, jet ski operators, vendors, agro processors, tour guides, hairdressers, barbers, small bar and restaurant operators, construction workers and other sole traders who meet the criteria can apply using the government of St. Lucia's website, www.govt.lc. Payments will be made directly via electronic transfer to the recipient's bank account. The Income Support Program, simple strides towards recovery. And thank you so much for staying with us. We're here with the director of the National Insurance Corporation, the NIC, Mr. Matthew Matherer. We also have the internal group internal auditor, Mrs. Sue Ann Shalry Payne and of course the communications manager, Mr. McNaughton McLean. We have some questions coming in as I indicated just before the break and try to really go through them. Any idea when payments will be sent out and how will one know when they will get the payment because I have not received any feedback since I applied online. So how do you now give an indication of what someone's status is? So I'll do it. Okay, well we welcome persons to send messages to our emails or online chat, seeking any updates that they want. But from NIC's point, we do send out emails to individuals informing them when a payment has been processed. In most cases, whether they're queries, persons should receive a call indicating that your application has been processed but there's an issue. So from NIC's end it would be via email or via the chat from persons end who seek information on the application. They will come to send a message email on live chat. We've been getting quite a few of that. Of those. But we also have an email account set up specifically to deal with matters on the ERP. It's COVID-19 at stluxa-n-i-c-dot-o-r-g. They serve with over 21,000 applications, you can imagine. We have quite a lot of email to respond to. Last night, at seven o'clock, the communications officer was trying to ensure that she had less than a thousand. So she was responding to ensure by today she would have had less than a thousand. I'm certain by the time she came in the morning they would have had an additional 2,000. And it's not that we deliberately not responded. It's the volume. The volume of calls. People would say that they call in the numbers that we provide and nobody's answering. It's not that we're not answering. We are on the phone at the time dealing with another customer. I had a discussion with the team asking perhaps whether or not we could utilize a system like is used with the airlines for instance. If you call the airlines, they'll tell you you have a waiting time of about 30 minutes and your call will be answered in the queue. And I was advised that probably would not work for our purposes because most people are calling on a mobile device. And if you're asking them to wait for 30 minutes, then it is likely that you will chew up all of the minutes. So that's something we couldn't consider. I can say that we understand the situation the applicant or the caller is in. And we know that when people are not working that it could be, when you have bills and stuff to pay that it could be problematic if there is no money coming and even right now we're looking to see if we could even speed up this thing because right now the programmers are working on the way to for the email to go out immediately as it's processed. So at least people are notified that. It's an automated process. Yes, it's been done because right now we have the system where we have to pull in. We have the templates where we have to pull in the email addresses, et cetera. So now we try to get something online by Wednesday next week. So that's not as process it goes on but we have staff actually allocated well to respond into those emails. And some of them will go through the gap. We'll fall through the gap. Some of them would have been disallowed and because sometimes the persons will try to get through to us and then well the application will come in and the system will automatically reject it because of certain things. But we have people trying to see how we could allocate resources to deal with those things and make sure the person can get a quick enough answer on this thing. So we understand but if she calls in whenever we get a query we have people immediately trying to sort it out especially when it comes to payments. But it's just the share volume that we can't get to everyone in that sort of timely fashion. Another question is one individual is hoping that May and June payments will be together because now since we're in July do you do a double payment? Do you correlate payments? You could go in that but I could tell you that we have been paying me already because we've gone a significant amount of me because in the what 18,000 payments we've made quite a chunk is in me but Suhan you could talk about the young. Yeah so what we try to do now that we in July as you indicated once we have the information to support the ability to pay for the back periods we would pay that. So for example if somebody's application comes in and they're applicable for April, May and June and we're processing them right now we would attempt to process all of them. It may not be all in one lump sum you may not get one lump sum payment but within a short time. So if you process April and May we want to like to process together if they are both outstanding. June that thereafter once we have the information from the employer to say yes you're still unemployed for that period and so on. So I'm getting the sense that there isn't necessarily to say that this is the month that we're dealing with because the applications as they come in perhaps will be for different months now that we are in July. So even if you were to send in that application and it's for the month of May it doesn't necessarily mean that you won't get paid the month of May if you send it in June or and say well oh my God I send that I can't get May payments yet that's not necessarily how it works. So you pay once the application has come to the attention and it is being processed so you get paid for that month. And you made the eligibility requirements for all three months so there's no cut off to say if you don't send by a particular time before fit a period before you know. And so you will get paid even if we are in the month of July. There's another important question here and the person wants to know why when you get your severance pay in the month of May in the beginning of June you are not allowed for the ERP for May. Not sure I quite understand. You get the severance is done in the month of May and so perhaps the person has been laid off or made redundant and so payment is made by the employer and but in the beginning of June you are not allowed for you to benefit under the ERP for May. If the financial benefit well the severance money that you would have gotten would be a financial benefit to you. If those monies relate to the period of May you'd be processes normal once you meet the eligibility requirements and any financial benefit you would have gotten would have been deducted. If the severance amount exceeded the amount you'd have qualified under the economic relief it would result in a zero payout. Not that you are not entitled it's just that your payout would have been zero because of the financial benefit you got by virtue of the severance amount. Yeah because I take it that the applicant the caller the writer would they looking at the timing of the payment so the payment is made they receive the payment in June. In June at the beginning of June. But you see that the payment relates to the period April. Now if there's a significant period like the payment is received in December at a long term and although the program does not extend that far right there's some consideration but the payment is reasonable within reasonable proximity to the period you claim in for and it's in relation to the period you claim in for therefore it's applicable for deduction from whatever you tell from the NIC. Another question here and I suppose this has to do with the income support program when are the vendors getting paid? Okay so just to clarify as it relates to the differentiation between the income support program and the NIC economic relief program the income support program is administered by the government of St. Lucia. So the application process the review of the applications and so on are done by the government of St. Lucia. The payments are actually being done by the government of St. Lucia. It's a government funded program and NIC is providing support as it relates to particular pieces of information that are required but the payment actually be done by the government. So to answer the question I think a representative from the government would be better placed to confirm when those payments would be made. So you wanted to acquire these here pertaining to bank accounts and one individual's querying that's an amount of $325 not accounted for the account but removed from the account and the banker indicated that the NIC perhaps money's reverted to the NIC. Is there any sort of situation in which something like this may occur? Money's would have been deposited to somebody's account but somehow reverted to the NIC. Is there a situation that would allow for such a transaction to happen or mistransaction? We'll probably need more details on that. We know the bank would send back monies to us if they cannot find the account or if the account information is incorrect but if it's a legitimate applicant and the money goes to a legitimate account then we've not had instances where that money would be sent back to us and we've only asked the bank to send back some money if there's a problem with the application or if it realizes it's a fraudulent claim or something of the sort. I cannot think now of any such instance. I don't know if you all guys remember. No, I have come across no such. So that person could probably call in them and we'd probably try to get somebody to look at the specifics of that particular claim. So let's hope we've alluded to rejected applications and perhaps some of the reasons why those applications would have been rejected would have been disallowed. We want to use the word disallowed instead. So on what basis would some of those be? Because I think we have in the region of 1400 which would have been disallowed if I'm not mistaken. One of the main reasons would be the absence of contribution received which would be a fair, there's an expectation that you were employed in the month of February 2020. You'd have at least contributed once to the national insurance. So we have a basis for the contributors. If our search reveals that there are no contribution information then there's no basis to approve. So you would not have met that eligibility requirement. The second one would be where your unemployment was not as a result of COVID. So you probably may have been unemployed say in March or February but it wasn't as a result of COVID. Maybe you left to take up another job or maybe that did not realize. Or, yeah, you are terminated for reasons other than COVID. Or resigned. I assume she was not bad as well. Or resigned, that's been the reason why you would not have qualified. So the verification process because each application would have to be verified. What's the time allotment for the verification? Does that add to the response time that you give as well? Yes, it varies. One of the biggest challenges that we have is juggling the efficiency of getting it out on time and reasonable level of accuracy within controls to ensure that there's no manipulation of the system. So you have the applications being processed. We have a second person verifying it just to ensure accuracy and then it gets sent down to accounts for payment. Where we try to make up on the efficiency is to have it electronic. So you don't necessarily have persons manually doing the comparisons but you need some way to look on to ensure that there's nothing that flags as an error. So we have the points of processor, verifier and payment. We have further streamlined that. Once the first payment have gone through as in the month of April have gone through, we figure we've already gone through the regular due diligence. May and June, it would only require one person just go back and verify, particularly that the employer has not submitted a change of information. Because what we would have processes based on information for April. So we expect to see increased efficiencies for the following months, provided that there are no changes in the information. We are actually seeing changes, persons confirming that they have changed information, persons have gone back and so on. So we need to factor those in. But generally, these are the steps that we go through if an application is approved. This is not an automatic. I think there seem to be an expectation. I don't know if that's what it is. Like you on, say, a payroll. It's not standard where you're on NIC's payroll and you know automatically you just rerun a payroll every month. Circumstances may change. If there are no changes, then it is easier to rerun. But once there are changes, you need to go in and tweak it and then, so that takes some time. So you have a set date for payments for each month. So if you pay in the first of every month, would that make it an easier process? Is it even feasible to do it in that manner? It's not feasible. We actually set targets. But then, you know, they say the best lead plans not survive the first bullet in the battle. So as you go through, you see new permutations and new scenarios coming up, which you have to deal with. So yes, but what we have, we have the account staff working late every night. So we use EFT, the economic funds transfer, because the easiest thing when it's easier, it's easier than having to do checks, et cetera, in the banks. So you have the system generating listening to be paid and this has to be uploaded and it has to be verified because the EFT requires three, an importer, you know about him or me, an importer, a verifier and somewhere to offer as a transaction because there's no check physical synchrony on the computer, whatever it is. And that is emailed to the bank, sent to the bank and the bank might take 24 to 48 hours before it goes to your account. And again, because the bank probably uses an electronic digital system, these computers not think of anything as if it does not meet in one little digit is off, it goes off into a return, a bin or something. So you find, but that's the most efficient way to get it done. So we have our account staff working nightly, right through, till about maybe, now the guys are breaking down now, quite honestly. We have staff working constantly, we have an overtime system, but people are at it constantly. And remember, we've been at it for months now, right? So we are churning out, as long as a list is generated, we churn it out. We do not wait for set dates, we just churn it out. So the set date is as soon as possible, as long as it's available. So multiple times a day, we have multiple batches. So there's no, we only wait until once a week or so on. Multiple times a day, every day of the week. And even now, we have within all the time, so we look at what's outstanding and we try to see if we could cut corners in terms of relaxing some of the controls, where we are reasonably comfortable that there's a diminished risk of any fraud. And it still suits out, we can speed up the stuff. But we cannot afford to just simply just dish out money like this, without ensuring that we pay into the persons who are legitimately entitled to it. Because people are trying things. I mean, even now, people are now coming to register now to pay back. People have not been on the system for 20 years, just to be back to get, we see one person try to register a daughter. We have not been working in the system for quite a while. People are 89 years old, or 72 years old, people who have been already pensioned. So there are lots of things coming through. In fact, just to start off, the system rejected, well, people tried about, it's over 20 something. Yeah. 1,000. 23,000. And then the system was, well, spat out about 5,700 initially. And then the risk came through legitimately. And then these have to be processed further. So it is a Huculian task, and I think the staff have done quite well. I mean, I understand persons' situation all day. And I mean, you just have to empathize. But I want them to know that the NIC is doing everything it can to make sure they get the money on a timely basis. And again, we have made 18,000 payments so far. It's unfortunate that some people have not gotten. But again, those persons, they are legitimate reasons. And if they call in, we'll put people on it to make sure that they can get it. And of course, the cry to that is, well, I'm calling, but I can't get my call answered. But just to follow up from what you were saying, Director, we have a question here. For non-contributors to the NIC, if you are 60 years old and operating a bar, do I qualify? And I suppose they're referring now to the income support. Yes. And they would probably qualify under the government program. But again, Suan is our point person on the government. So I don't know if you would talk on that, but it's a government, I mean, it's a program and the government are making the payments. But no, they would probably have to apply to the government to determine whether or not they qualify. And so with 60 years, would someone be able to qualify if they're 60 years old? I don't know that somebody who's 60 years of criteria is saying you have to be less than 60 years, younger than 60 years to qualify. OK. So a lot of people, let's talk about the bureaucratic problems. Since we know we have all of those bottlenecks there, what are some of the solutions that you look into? So sort of easing the strain, the burden. All right. First you could probably identify the problems. So I guess to each of the problems, there might be some sort of solution. All right. So we have increased the number of persons who are engaged in processing and verifying, definitely as one of them. We do recognize one of the areas we could have improved on is the timeliness of our communication to the applicants. We know that. And we have been making strides, like the director said, to automate that process. So one of the responses to the delayed response in getting feedback from the NIC is to attempt to automate. Because of the number of different reasons why, say, somebody's claim is inquiry or has been disallowed. Programming it, obviously, needs a lot of fine-tuning. So in attempting to have it be automated, we are working on that. And we do recognize that there have been a time lapse that would be unreasonable for most. And we do apologize for that. But we are trying to do better at that with our automation. And it's not automated, it's automated further. Because there is automation. But we're trying to make it more efficient in terms of making it automatic. Right now, we're using a hybrid of the system and some importing. Right now, I wonder if that starts the process, it goes right away. No time lapse. That's what we're looking for. So that's a great solution moving forward. Yes. And the guys are actively now programming to make that happen. Particularly for those persons whose claims are inquiry. So we would have started processing it. And they may not have received payment, at least to let them know it is because it has been disallowed. They have not met for whatever eligibility requirement that was not met. Or we have difficulty with query. Another issue is with regards to the mismatch in the NIN number, so actually pulling up the legitimate claim and to be able to have that application go through the system is what I was taking some time. But at least we're trying to get to the applicant on a timely basis to let them know the status. I think that is one of the areas that we recognize that there's a need for improvement that we are working on. Also increase the number of lines. I have the numbers and I plan to actually put out some communication on that. I got it today. So we have a few additional lines dedicated to responding to requests for information from the claimants. And we need higher additional persons. And additional persons to man those phones. So we will be releasing the numbers by the end of today. It will be on our site. And we will probably be able to communicate. Additional telephone numbers. Additional telephone numbers, yeah. So we need to have additional bodies in there to be able to handle those lines. Absolutely, yes. I'll give us an idea though so that we can get a fuller sense, a fuller understanding. How many persons are manning the phones? Do you have a number of how many people are manning phones right now? Six at the moment. It's with the inclusion of the three new ones. So I think we have six. But every call, every officer practically answers questions relating to ERP because people may have numbers. I mean, some people call me directly and I say, how do you get this number? And they say, yeah. But every single officer at the NIC responds once they get a call. And we're looking and give you the information. So what about maternity and sick leave payments? Those are being done irrespective of the ERP. And that is a challenge, if you'll because these are the persons we exist to serve initially. When I see these persons, those claims, this is what we, it's on our menu to serve. The ERP came after. And again, it is not one that is funded through the 10%. So we cannot ignore those claims coming through. We have to give them some priority because those persons need the money as well as other people. So we have to have some resources which are allocated to deal with this. And that, again, makes it a bit difficult because we have to do our mean work. At the same time, we have to meet the expectations of our contributors who are out of work because they're hurting like, I mean, understand that they're hurting. But I could guarantee you. I could give the assurance that my staff are moving whatever obstacles they have to move. Putting in whatever effort that is necessary to ensure the work is done. And we get in there, I think. We get in there. We just want you to be a patient that anybody who's entitled to the payments from the NICD will get the money. Is there a situation where a sick leave benefit payment or maternity leave payment would render an ERP payment disallowed? It depends on the high of the two. So the regulations make provision for NICPain the higher of the two. So if your maternity benefit or sickness benefit for that same period amounts to more than you'd qualify for the ERP, you'd have gotten paid for the maternity or the sickness or whatever it is. So that's between the $500 to the $1,500. If the payment for the sick leave or maternity benefit is higher than that amount, you would have to give just the maternity or sick leave benefit. I mean, you apply to both. So they're both in our system. So if the maternity benefit would have qualified for $1,000 and your ERP would have qualified for $500, more likely not considering that we're using the 50%. But you'd have gotten paid your maternity, which would be the $1,000. Again, it's timing as well because you may have gotten your maternity paid ahead of your ERP. When your ERP's been processed, if you have paid your maternity, which was less than what your ERP would have been paid the difference in your ERP when your ERP became due. So the objective is to ensure that you are getting the higher of the two benefits. Now, some people argue, well, this is such a tumultuous time. And no amount of money given to anyone now is too much because they're unemployed. So even if they were to have gotten some benefits from the employer, why not? Why can't they not still benefit from the ERP? NIC funds are not unlimited. And if we have a basket of less than a basket of monies, and some people are getting assistance, others are not, that basket would go along a lot further if we could spread it. If we could, let's put it that way, we'd want that basket to serve as many people as possible. And if some people are already getting a benefit, it's unfair, I think, to have them get the same amount as other persons because, in the end, fewer persons will end up getting from that basket. So had we had unlimited funds, yes, we could have done that. And just issue a check. It would be a lot easier. But at the same time, it's possible that some persons would be employed. Well, employers would be given some persons, especially I know that there was a plan for managers to get a certain amount of money, which would be more than what the staff would be getting. In addition to that, they would end up getting 50%, which is the higher end of the NICs thing. They'd end up getting the 1,500 from the NIC plus what we get from the employers. So in a way, you would find that that basket of money should be spread amongst fewer persons. That if that same 1,500 would be spread to other persons, we're probably entitled. So it's important that at least we meet the demands part way instead of no way at all. Because if it becomes too costly to something that we're not be able to do, if it's too many people having to be served from the same basket, it would be a lot less money for everybody. So I think it was in our, it was, and it goes along the whole concept of income support in the sense that we know that to replace your income, we need to support you. And you get in some support already, so we could help you. Other persons have nothing, they will get something. So at least we are able to ensure a minimum threshold. Of 50% of the world. Yeah, a minimum threshold, that of 50% of the way in troubled earnings, that you at least get something for you to be able to survive on. Okay, so bear with me on this one. And we have a query here. I was already paid for the month of April and I have not gotten paid for me. And when I messaged the NIC, they told me the application has been processed. And I know for a fact that the majority of my coworkers have gotten paid. How come some of us got money and you're still processing the rest? They all work in for one company. So this individual is saying that they applied for April, got paid for April, but May, they haven't received anything for May, yet other employees of that same company have already received. Right, it might be the ordering which is not necessary that you are processing all employers at a time. We try to do that, but there's a pool of applications to be processed. So it probably might be the order in which that application falls in line. But if the other employees are in process, there should not be too much longer considering that we probably would have had the information from the employer to facilitate that. And you're right, and sometimes you find that the employers will upload information and an employee would have been excluded. Or human error, it could be that even in our processing, sometimes somebody could slip through the crack. So because again, you're dealing with thousands of persons. And again, we want to empathize with the individual. And I take a point that if we told her it's been processed, there should be some full attention that it's been done. So short of information on the specifics, it might be difficult to deal with, but again, it's something, if the person has could email, well again, she's already emailed, so we don't know who it is. But if we talk about the system generally, yes, this could happen, because the employee may not have uploaded the information, or there could have been human error were in the processing that that person could have slipped out. Now, if it's a hotel, now there might be a situation where for the hotels, the hotel employees may have consented for the hotels to get the money on their behalf. Now with those, these people are their process separately from those persons who do not consent because with the hotel, we send one check for all of these persons. So we are able to process it a lot faster. And then we could go to the individuals and now have to tally that information to the hotel information. So again, it might be a situation if it's a hotel that the other employees may have been processed because they consented, and in that person, they did not consent, then they would take the queue, like everybody else. So one individual is wanting to know in terms of the support for the employers, and I think we spoke about that a little earlier, but if you can just read or read it, how are you helping the employers to understand the form, how to fill the form out? Well, we have the technician who is working on the employer portal. In every instance where we receive some information that an employer is having difficulty, we put them directly in touch and they walk them through the system. That happens all the time. We also have the demonstration on the website. And I don't know for some reason, a lot of employers do not want to go and follow the demonstration. And I don't know why, but we took the time to create a demonstration on what is required. They prefer to speak directly with the technicians and we pretty much facilitated that. But at any time, and if anyone has difficulty, all they need to do is to reach out to us and we will certainly try to assist them. But there is a video, there is the demonstration. Yeah, there's a guideline which gives you a step-by-step walkthrough on how to complete the employer portal. So just to reiterate for the public, the NIC has been able to process 21,000 applications, correct? We have had 18,500 payments that have been made. The average, the per payment, that's $830.16 and the payout total thus far is $15.3 million. That's correct? Take the notes down immediately. So before we wind up, let's talk about the extension. We've been alluding to it, the income support program. When will the NIC get the go ahead to now initiate, implement, roll out? We got it on the 30th of June. The Sanctuary Instrument was enacted, it was published and so now we have the legislative authority to proceed. And that money has already been deposited into the coffers of the NIC? Well, the NIC has money available from various accounts which are transferred to that ERP account as needed. Just to clarify, the income support is the government funded. Yes, the government funded program. That is not the NIC funded program. So NIC would not be the one to sponsor for making those payments. It would be paid through the government of Sanctuary Instrument. She said that she meant income support. Income support. No, it's my apology. For income support, okay. Right, this is the government funded. The government funded one. So the government's end of things would be taking care of that. But we've seen the extension of the ERP now. Is the Sanctuary Instrument, let's talk about it in the 30th of June. On the 30th of June, yes. So for the ERP, and you spoke about being able now to increase the number of people manning the phones, what are you doing now to double up for you to ensure that this three month extension does not bind the NIC in the way that this current rollout is doing? Are you doing anything differently? What we expect, because the persons who we imagine would have qualified for the July, August, and September would have been more than like the persons who have already applied and processed on the system. So the real hard work of going through the due diligence would have really happened on the upfront. So we are hoping that once there are no changes to the information, those would be a lot smoother in terms of the time to process those. One of the critical aspects for us to facilitate the smooth rollout is the timeliness with which we receive information of whether or not there are any changes, whether persons have been re-employed or if there are more persons who have been laid off that we need to be informed of, then those get processed. But the timeliness with which we are aware that the extension of the layoff period, for example, since when they applied, because the initial period was for three months, they may need to tell us that they have actually since extended in keeping with the new regulations for the further six months or whether those persons have been re-employed. And the start of the program is always the most difficult part of it. And in April, we were programming, we were trying to process applications. Remember we started with this, we wanted to have some physical forms available because of the numbers we had to roll back. So April was one of the most difficult months and we'd have seen a lot of the TV, dealt with a lot of the TV problems. And even now we continue to automate further to make sure that things are done faster. We're bringing new persons on board, additional persons on board. And we understand our staff will be getting tired. So we're looking at probably even implementing if necessary additional shifts, if necessary. But again, even if there are more shifts, they have to have people to be able to process those payments. So, and not only that, we have to, we back up our systems every night. So we have to time that in such a way that, so we can have people working throughout the clock. The system takes a long time to back up because we have, we back up to one on one site because we have NIC, we have information, information which we have to deal with. So in as much as we want to bring people around the clock to work, we have certain times that are available to us. And we're going to work up to a certain time so that they could back up. So we have to close the system by a particular time. And right now we move, we have people processing, maybe up to eight o'clock in the night. And we have the calls, people working sometimes way in nine, 10 o'clock to get this out. At the same time, the same people have to get the short term benefits out. So the ERP is already a significant amount. The short term is a lot as much. So it's as much as you could bring as many people as possible. The people have to be trained. They have to know the system. We have to have physical locations. It is not as simple as just in position. And the confidentiality of persons information. The other big thing too would be the accuracy of the information on the initial application. That a lot of the, when we checked for APRA, we had over more than 5,000 claims with queries. So most of these would have been cleared and the issues are addressed and resolved. So going forward for the additional months, there would be no need to go back and investigate all the issues. The bank account information would have been corrected by then, the issues with the NIN numbers, the employers would have had the correct information. Most of that would have been resolved at that stage. So we anticipate a smoother rollout for the additional three months. As we are wrapping up with just one query here, the individual is saying that some individuals are getting paid twice in a one month period. What would lend it to something like that happening? It could have been, like we said, it could have been the time when the application came in that we are trying to catch up. So if it is that they were entitled to two months, we would try to pay them back to back to get them up to the period that they should be. On a typical scenario, we may have had a claim for April in query and we finally are able to resolve the query. But me is used to just be that person for April and May and that is why we recognize the need for the system to generate whatever the correspondent that goes to the employee to see that this payment is for April and May. Now what we had previously was just saying your payment has been processed, but now we have to specify for what month because right now we are looking to pay more than one month at a time as long as the information is consistent throughout the month. Okay. And so of that, the 21,000 payments, that would be for what month? It expands, it expands, okay. Both April, yeah. It will expand April, May and June. Right, so the majority would be June because if you look at it from the sense that somebody who an application we receive now, that 21,000 is current applications now which includes person. No matter what have been processed and the payments made, the payments that we include. The majority of the payments relate to April. April, and we've made payments in May and I think maybe very few for June, right, if any. No, no, no, we have not made two payments. Mostly April, because we've practically done just a few we have on query in April and we've done a significant amount in May. Yes. So, yeah. And we still have new applications that are coming in for April. Okay. And for, so June, the June payment will be, you're expected to begin payments. Soon, because we just planned a meeting, we had planned a meeting today to see how we could cut corner suggests to pay off me within, within my next week completely and then start, start. Start the month of June. Because we had initially targeted the first week in July to be June, but again, we make plans. Just to be clear on the cutting corners, we would try to fast track the payments when they have been processed. If they are, they may be sent and may have slipped through the cracks because of us trying to balance efficiency of accuracy. We would stick to recover any over on the payments if they were made as a result of that in the subsequent months. We are guided by the regulations. So whatever it is we process, it would be enjoying that it didn't keep any of the regulations. So persons, just to be mindful that if you get a notification indicating that an adjustment is being made, it was because of a quest to try to get payments to you as quickly as possible at the time within reason, within accurate, as accurately as possible. But if we do have reason to believe, maybe even the information that was submitted at the time has since changed, we found, we got a few of those cases where we would have processed, given the information we had at the time and there have been changes that information submitted by the employer, say, or maybe our investigation showed that or a C3 form, which is the form that informs us of contribution speed on behalf of persons who are employed and earning an income, those who came in after that would suggest to us that those persons may have been employed, but we got notification that they were unemployed. It may have resulted in some sort of recovery and attempt to recover them but that would have been paid. So just to say, whilst we're trying to manage efficiency and pay as quickly as possible, we need to balance that aspect of it. So final words, spotting words there, some reassurance coming from you to the people of St. O'Shaan. Well, we want to say that we understand, and I'm talking mostly to those persons who have not received the money. We understand the situation and we give you the assurance that the NIC is mobilizing all the necessary resources to ensure that this is done in as speedily a manner as possible without at the same time compromising the fund. So bear patience with us. We understand the situation. We know the difficulties you face and we've taken this too hard and we'll do whatever is necessary to meet your expectations of us. But nothing on your end? Well, for us, we continue to communicate with the public. We use every available medium, social media platforms. We use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. We are on those platforms. We continue to man our live chat platform as well as the telephones and email. It's quite a lot for a three-man team, but we continue to do it. We understand the hardships. As the director explained, we will continue to assist everyone. We have a number of persons calling, both employers and employees about their claims. We will continue to assist you as much as possible. We will provide the information on the additional lines later today that you can use to access the NIC employees to get some clarification on individual claims. And we should have that information out by later today. Suwan, what can you say to the people to help them help you, to help them? Yeah, so while we continue to refine our processes to try to get those payments out to those putans who we know we need to reach as quickly as possible, I'd like to use this opportunity to implore the employers to provide us with the feedback that we need as timely as possible. We try to make it as less administratively burdensome as possible. Just reply to the email telling us whether the information has not changed for as much as you can see. We're in July now, so you would know your position up to June. At the end of July, don't necessarily wait for us to reach out to ask, have there been any changes or inform us of any changes? Once we have that information on, it will assist us to process the payments for the employees as quickly as possible. Let me say thank you so much to all of you for coming in. I know that if you having to make the time to come here, it means the time you've taken off from being able to process and take care of what the NIC is. So mandated and inundated with right now. Let's say thank you very much to the director of the NIC, Mr. Matthew Mathran, the AIL Group internal auditor, who is Mrs. Sue Ann-Charlie Payne, and the communications manager, McNaughton McLean, just for emphasis or re-emphasizing, reiterating over 21,000 applications process, received and processed. We have 18,500 payments and with an average per payment of $830.16. And in total, we've seen $15.3 million in a payout. I know that for those of you who have not received, it seems as if it will never come. But from all that I've heard here today indicates that the payments are being processed, it has come in. And so it's just a matter of patience. We want to say and invite you back at any point when you have any updates, please feel free. So that we can communicate with the public. I'm Lisa Joseph, signing off from the Information Command Center. See you next time.