The National Insurance System pension to which all employed people must compulsorily contribute is the sole income source for many elderly people in TT. It was never intended to be so back in 1971 when the law was passed and the system was being set up.

I was on the board of directors and it was an enormous responsibility. Although guided by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), it is a tripartite board, and decisions made at every meeting of the board were the result of a compromise negotiated between the employers' representatives and the trade union representatives.

It was acknowledged, in order that pensions would be provided to contributors who were past 65, the NIS had to be able to pay for itself. Funds had to be obtained, saved and wisely invested so that the sad state then being witnessed daily, of elderly people literally impoverished and ill, dying of malnourishment for lack of money, would not happen in the future.

In order to ensure that the National Insurance Board (NIB) became and remained viable, it had to be run in a business-like manner. It had to spend less that it earned to provide for the future, in other words. Earnings came through contributions from employees and employers and through wise investments. You learn this in fourth form budgeting class.

The board made mistakes sometimes from misjudgements. That happens to everyone except Warren Buffet apparently. Does anyone remember the Varinstall plan? All investments carry an element of risk, which is why investors are warned against making investments on the basis of emotion, not reason and recorded experience.

At the time it began, only the public service and a few foreign-based private companies had pension schemes for their employees. When the NIS pension benefit was conceived it was not intended to be the sole support of the aged. It was intended to supplement individuals' own savings which all people were expected to put aside for their later years.

Those who could not do so were expected to have children who would look after them. That was the way it was. If you did not have the foresight to have had children, there were few resources to help you survive other than your family or yourself.

The national pension scheme required employees to contribute on a monthly basis to fund their old age. It was a benefit that saved whole segments of the elderly population from a painful and penurious old age and a sad death from hunger and shame.

It was not perfect or universal. It did not cover the self-employed, nor allowed them to contribute. It provided income for the spouses of male employees, who had contributed, after they died (until they remarried, as, apparently, the NIB expected them to do) but did not give the same benefit to the spouse of a woman contributor who died, which was sexist but considered normal at the time, but it was a beginning. And it provided some support and dignity in their declining years to those that had given their lives in building this country.

Now, we understand from official notices