Dear Claudienne,

I worked with the Ministry of Health (MOH) as part of the auxiliary staff of the Buff Bay Community Hospital. I retired in 1996 at age 60.

I am now 70 years of age and I am only receiving some of my NIS pension as my contributions for some years have still not been found.

I applied to the Ministry of Health for my government pension but up to the time of sending you this email (August 9,2018),they have not responded.

I am hoping that you can assist me to find out about my pension.

I am now living in England with my daughter and you can contact me on WhatsApp.

DB

Dear DB

To enable Tell Claudienne to contact the MOH about your pension, the column obtained the following information from an email your brother, who lives in Jamaica, sent us. The email stated:

“Further to our conversation of 27/11/2019 concerning my sister DB.

Her file at the Ministry of Health Pension Branch at 10A Chelsea Avenue was being handled by an MJ but I don’t know if he is still at that office.

The final document outstanding on the file that MJ had was the Statutory Declaration of Service (sample attached). I saw this file myself on a visit to the office at Chelsea Avenue some time ago.

This Statutory Declaration was to be completed and signed by a Miss W at Port Antonio Hospital. My sister worked at the Buff Bay and Annotto Bay hospitals, but her file is at Port Antonio.

Despite several visits and calls to Port Antonio Hospital by my sister’s granddaughter, the Statutory Declaration has still not been completed by the hospital.”

Tell Claudienne then contacted the North East Regional Health Authority (NERHA) director for human resource management and industrial relations in Ocho Rios.

She sent an email to the column on March 23, 2020 stating the following:

“Efforts are currently being made by our team to locate DB’s personnel file. As you can appreciate, the file would not be handy, given the passage of time.

We will be providing a further update as to our progress within two (2) weeks from yesterday’s date [2020 03 24].”.

The NERHA research showed that all of your salary was not paid by the Port Antonio Hospital, as between 1978-82 you were paid by the Port Maria Hospital.

From the information obtained by the NERHA from the Port Antonio and Port Maria hospitals, your service record was prepared and sent to the MOH pensions unit in September, 2020.

Processing of your file was finally completed and sent to the Pension Administration Unit of the Ministry of Finance (MOF) on April 30, 2021.

Please ask your brother to obtain updates about the processing of your pension from the MOF pensions unit.

We wish you all the best.

Have a problem with a store, utility, a company? Telephone 876-936-9436 or cell # 876-484-1349 or write to: Tell Claudienne c/o Sunday Finance, Jamaica Observer, 40-42 1/2 Beechwood Avenue, Kingston 5; or e-mail:edwardsc@jamaicaobserver.com. Please include a contact phone number.