Greenwich Town fishers excited about health insurance

The Greenwich Town Fisherfolk Benevolent Society has labelled Tuesday’s announcement by Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries Floyd Green of a health and insurance package for farmers and fishers as long overdue and well needed.

Under Sagicor AgriCare Programme, farmers who are registered with the Rural Agricultural Development Authority and fishers who are registered with the National Fisheries Authority will have access to a Group Major Medical Plan, a Full House Plan, a Critical Illness Plan, a Personal Accident Plan and a Group Life Plan. Dependents of farmers and fishers are also eligible under the programme.

“Come March 1, 2021, the hard-working farmers and fisherfolk of our country will have access to the newly implemented group health and life insurance plan, the first of its kind in Jamaica’s history,” Green told Parliament this week. “Members, if you were to go and sign up for life and health insurance elsewhere, you would be required to provide evidence of your medical status. However, in this Sagicor Plan, Sagicor will provide this open enrolment period, where they are able to sign up without the requirement of medical evidence as to their medical status.”

He continued: “Madam Speaker, to share with the House an example of the packages that have been crafted, for a monthly premium of only $217.08, a farmer or fisher could have personal accident coverage of $1 million. A Critical Illness Bundle has a coverage of $500,000 with the monthly premium of just $284.10, and for $965.95, you can get up to $1 million for the Group Life Plan – that is a life insurance coverage for $1 million for less than $1,000 per month!”

Yesterday, Winston Munroe, chairman of the Greenwich Town Fisherfolk Benevolent Society, told The Gleaner that this was a benefit for which his organisation had long advocated.

He said that in addition to the estimated 100 seafarers who ply their trade from the Greenwich Town Fishing Village, at least an additional 300 persons stood to benefit, including fish vendors, shop owners, people who scale and gut fish, persons who clean boats, pickers who pull sprats from nets, as well as workmen who repair boats, nets and pots.

Munroe and president of the society, Novelette Mighty, said they these persons are grouped in categories based on the task at which they are skilled and perform on the beach. Their names, as well as addresses and contact numbers are all included in its data bank.

“A lot of fishers go sea for all their life and sometimes when then get sick, there is no system in place to provide even basic assistance in terms of health. Also, some of them when they get old and sick and can’t go to sea, just end up spending their last days literally on the beach and there is no proper arrangement in place for burial. This is just one of the things for which we have been advocating for years,” said Munroe.

Mighty, who admitted to being a “proud fish vendor”, pointed out that the Greenwich Town Fisherfolk Benevolent Society had long recognised the integral contribution of the people who fall outside of the definition of ‘fishers’. To this end, it had embarked on a registration drive to ensure that they were on file with the National Fisheries Authority. The excitement generated by the news was palpable and had an invigorating effect on these groups, especially the fact that their spouses and children also stood to benefit. She was certain it would help to boost registration.

“A lot of them are registered, but not all of them because we have been on a registration drive. We also have data for most of them and we register even people who clean the boats. So we have been doing sensitisation and getting everybody involved,” she said.

“We can tell you how many boats we have, how many vendors because we categorise our workers. So we are almost ready for them,” added Munroe, who sees this development as a late recognition of the contribution of the fishing industry to the national economy.

christopher.serju@gleanerjm.com