PORT MARIA, St Mary – NI Gold, the government’s new $300 million a year health plan for the island’s 80,000 pensioners, was officially introduced to retirees in St Mary as the first town meeting took place at the Port Maria Anglican Church in that parish on Wednesday.

Aimed at giving National Insurance Scheme (NIS) pensioners additional health benefits, the National Insurance Gold Health Plan, launched last December, is being administered by Blue Cross of Jamaica on behalf of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security.

“It will have a far-reaching impact on pensioners, for them it’s a really significant programme,” junior minister for social security, Senator Floyd Morris, told the Observer at the meeting on Wednesday.

Pensioners’ income, he said, tends to be eaten away by inflation and NI Gold would help cushion that effect.

“This is why the ministry of labour and the government have decided to put in another benefit programme for the pensioners and this is going to go a far way to assist the approximately 80,000 pensioners that we have on our benefit programme,” he explained.

Funding for the programme will come from the NIS funds, which now stands at $28 billion. A substantial portion of this money comes from returns on investments of NIS contributions which, Morris disclosed, are invested in various instruments including government papers, stock market and real estate.

“It is giving us very good returns. We have a very competent management team in the ministry that deals in those matters,” the junior minister said.

Acting director for the NIS, Denzil Thorpe, said inspectors are being more vigilant when it comes to collecting contributions from employers.

“We are going out, we’re getting the employers, we’re taking them to court,” Thorpe told the approximately 500 pensioners who packed the church to hear of the programme. “We have our legal team, we have our compliance team to ensure the money is being paid over; and where it isn’t we’re using the maximum penalties that the law allows to ensure that people’s money, once deducted, is paid over.”

He also encouraged workers across the island to try and find out if contributions deducted from their salaries are being paid over to the Scheme.

“It is in everybody’s interest to find out at the end of every year if National Insurance deductions have been paid,” he said. “So part of it is on the individual to ensure that people are paying, but the onus is also on us at the ministry to ensure that these contributions are being paid. We are going out vigorously to these employers and say look here, where is the people’s money that you’ve deducted?”

NI Gold beneficiaries will receive a swipe card similar to the one that Blue Cross clients now use. The benefits are also similar, with pensioners benefiting from NI Gold payments for doctors’ visits, consultants’ fees, diagnostic services, dental and optical services, surgeons’ fees, hospital services and several other categories.

The new programme comes into effect eight months after the much-heralded National Health Fund (NHF) which was earmarked to enable the elderly to access drugs at lowers costs.