‘Unfair!’ NIS called on to look into maternity benefit, grant, leave Loop Barbados

Black Immigrant Daily News

National Insurance Scheme (NIS) CEO Kim Tudor is assuring Barbadians that “We will look at the legislation when we look at this reform”

After being questioned in relation to laws surround both NIS benefits and labour laws in Barbados recently, Tudor contended, “they certainly need looking at… We need to have persons understanding and better informed.”

She was responding at the time to Former NIS officer Stephen Strickland who has emphatically called for major changes in legislation which affect many women who are vulnerable.

Noting that adjustments were made for qualification for sickness, injury and unemployment in 2006, he called for maternity benefits and grants to be reassessed.

“We need to examine the laws because it is unfair to women.”. He said that some women are sick from pregnancy and therefore that is nine months of sickness, but he argued they should still qualify for maternity benefit “because there are those individuals who are sick for a whole year and still get invalidity benefit afterwards. That part of that legislation needs to be reexamined.”

He then went on to lobby for changes to the maternity grant. This is a cheque paid to an unemployed partner based on their partner’s contributions. “As far as I’m concerned, there should be no requirement that the father and the mother who are not married should be living together because he has paid his contributions; his name is on the birth certificate, which is the highest legal document in Barbados, he has signed at the Registration Department that he is the father, the maternity grant form he also signed saying he is the father, he should never have to say he’s living with her, because you know Bajans.”

He said that in the Barbadian context cohabiting in the same house but his mail goes to his original home, and a visiting relationship are interchangeable terms. “I think that law needs to be examined because there is no requirement where the two persons are married – no matter how long they are married.”

And his third point came out of the labour legislation as it relates to one woman working for one employer and getting pregnant four times during her tenure. He stood his ground that in the labour laws of this land, still on the statute books is a law that says on applying for her fourth set of maternity leave she can be dismissed by that employer without it being deemed a wrongful dismissal.

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