Handing over social insurance books: Creating convenience for employees

(Baonghean) - Recently, in order to contribute to ensuring the legitimate rights of workers, Nghe An Social Insurance has coordinated with units to hand over social insurance books for workers to self-manage.

These days, workers of the Agricultural Nutrition Company Limited, Nam Cam Industrial Park cannot hide their joy when holding their social insurance books in their hands, the result of many years of hard work.

Ms. Le Thi Hai Thu - Company employee excitedly shared: "I am very happy to directly hold the fruits of my labor over the past 10 years. Although the company always promptly resolves employee policies, when I directly hold the book, I can check the information promptly and feel more secure."

Director of Nghe An Provincial Social Insurance, Le Truong Giang, presents social insurance books to employees of Agricultural Nutrition Company Limited. Photo: Chu Thanh

Handing over social insurance books to employees for management is a new regulation to better ensure the rights of employees. Previously, social insurance books were mostly kept by employers according to the provisions of Social Insurance Law No. 71/2006/QH, so in the past, some problems and shortcomings have arisen.

Most of the officers in charge of social insurance at the units mainly work part-time and are frequently rotated; the units do not have specialized means to preserve social insurance books while the retention period is long, easily getting moldy; separate sheets of social insurance books are easily lost, and even employers do not return social insurance books to employees when they need to move to a new workplace; in many cases, although employers still deduct social insurance contributions from employees, they do not submit them to the social insurance agency, but instead appropriate them for other purposes and employees are not aware... seriously affecting the social insurance benefits of employees when they need to have their social insurance regime resolved.

To overcome the above shortcomings, the 2014 amended Law on Social Insurance stipulates that employees have the right to keep their social insurance books. Each social insurance book shows information about the employee's personal information and social insurance payment history, so self-management of social insurance books will help employees grasp the information clearly and be more proactive in implementing and resolving social insurance regimes according to the law.

In addition, employees can also monitor and request employers to comply with legal regulations on their responsibility to pay social insurance in a timely manner; prevent the situation where employees have their salaries deducted to pay social insurance but the employer does not pay the money to the social insurance agency, avoiding the responsibility of the employer as well as the employee's contribution without their knowledge.

In particular, directly keeping the social insurance book also helps employees when they quit their jobs to promptly resolve social insurance and unemployment insurance regimes or have a social insurance book immediately to continue participating, connecting the social insurance payment process when working at another enterprise.

At the same time, handing over social insurance books to employees for management is also a solution to help reduce human resources for businesses in the management of social insurance books, thereby reducing business costs. This is also the goal of reforming administrative procedures of the social insurance industry.

When employees manage their own social insurance books, the relationship will be between the employee and the social insurance agency without going through the employer. However, while many employees expect to be able to manage their own social insurance books, many are still concerned about this.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Trang - Worker of Nghe Tinh Railway Management Company Limited expressed: "Workers like me only know about professional work, not everyone really understands social insurance issues or updates information on changes in insurance policies and procedures, so when solving social insurance-related issues, we will encounter many difficulties."

In addition to the concerns of employees, many businesses and employers also have questions about a number of issues, including the fact that after returning the books to employees and wanting to request the Social Insurance agency to reduce the number of employees, they have to wait for the employees to transfer the books back, which is time-consuming.

Staff of BSE Electronics Company Limited. Photo: Chu Thanh

Answering these questions, Mr. Nguyen Ba Cuong - Deputy Head of the Social Insurance Card Issuance Department of Nghe An said: "The provincial Social Insurance has issued official dispatches guiding the review and transfer of social insurance books to employees for management. In cases such as when businesses want to reduce their workforce or employees want to resign, the provincial Social Insurance has also issued regulations guiding the transfer of documents to the Social Insurance agency for priority processing, avoiding wasting time for all parties.

Along with that, before organizing the handover of the book, the provincial Social Insurance has strengthened the propaganda work extensively for the employers as well as the employees to clearly understand the regulations on handover of the book. The provincial Social Insurance also advised the Provincial People's Committee to direct the employers to coordinate with the provincial Social Insurance agency to speed up the progress because this is a regulation of the law, as well as to ensure the rights of both businesses and employees.

During the implementation process, the provincial Social Insurance agency also encountered many difficulties and problems. Last year, the Social Insurance of Nghe An and Ha Tinh provinces were piloting the use of 3S software but there was no support for the handover of books on the interface, and some functions were not completed. That caused many difficulties for Social Insurance officers and employees.

On the other hand, the province has about 230,000 social insurance books that need to be handed over, so the workload is very large. Currently, Nghe An Social Insurance is asking for guidance from Vietnam Social Insurance to support the use of the software for managing the operations of the industry (3S) - the software is not yet a centralized data of the whole country. With great effort and determination, Nghe An Social Insurance agency is trying to ensure the progress of handing over social insurance books to employees before December 31, 2018.

Chu Thanh