Your NIS benefits
NIS is a compulsory contributor-funded social security scheme, which offers financial protection to the worker and his family against loss of income arising from injury on job, incapacity, retirement, and death of the insured.
Employed, self-employed and voluntary contributors are eligible for benefits.
The benefits include retirement, widows’/widowers’, invalidity, special child, orphan, employment injury, and funeral grant.
Persons eligible for retirement benefits must have reached retirement age (65). These persons must have made the required number of contributions and have stopped working.
Persons eligible for a widow’s or widower’s benefit must have been married for at least three years, or have been in a common-law union for at least five years. The deceased must have paid a minimum of 156 weekly contributions with an annual average of at least 13.
An invalidity benefit may be awarded as a pension or grant to the contributor. It is paid to a woman under 60 years or a man under 65 years who is no longer able to work because of a mental or physical illness.
A special child’s benefit may be claimed by any adult caring for a child under 18 whose mother is dead and whose father is dead or cannot be identified. The benefit may also be payable if the whereabouts of the father are unknown.
An orphan’s benefit may be claimed by any adult who has the care of a child under 18, whose parents are dead, regardless of whether the parents were married. This is payable from the date on which the child became an orphan until his/her 18th birthday.
The employment injury benefit is payable to all employed persons if they are injured during the course of the insurable employment or develop a prescribed disease attributable to the nature of the insurable employment.
A funeral grant is payable on the death of a contributor or his/her spouse; persons who were in receipt of old age, invalidity, widows’/widowers’, disablement and sugar workers pension (with the exception of the special anniversary pensioners); or persons whose death resulted from employment injury or from one of a list of prescribed diseases.
