Question:
We are a small family-owned company in central. We sell hardware stuff. We only have ten employees, three have been with the company for thirty years, and four, some of them our best workers, are over sixty-five, but still able to work and want to work. Except one.
She has recently decided that she wants to retire and go to live with her daughter in Port of Spain. She wrote a letter to the current GM asking to be “paid off”, whatever that means, and wants to know what her pension arrangements are. We don’t have a private pension scheme, just NIS. I do the accounts. What am I supposed to do?
Answer:
I am assuming that you have been keeping your NIS payments up to date, and as a result your employees, when they retire will all be eligible to collect their National Insurance Benefits which now amount to as much as $3,000.00 a month depending on their contribution category.
Unless you have made any agreement to the contrary that is all under the law that you are responsible to pay.
The Industrial Court, however, has recently made an award granting an employee the equivalent of severance pay upon retirement where the employer has not made any financial arrangements upon the retirement of employees. In that case, however, the employer was requiring the employee to retire at a certain age, and in your case the employee is choosing to retire, or resign, herself.
My suggestion is that you make arrangements for the employee to collect her pension benefits through the Port of Spain NIS office nearest where her daughter lives, and have a farewell function for her at which you give her a farewell gift and a cheque for what the company can afford, in gratitude and recognition for her years of service with the firm.
